Brilliancy
by glenarvon
Summary: A series of one-shots and mini-arcs. In this installment: Two complicated people find each other in the dark.
1. Quick 2

_**Introductory Notes:**_

**Rating**: Swearing, canon-typical violence and lots and lots of moral grey. May go up later.

**Story**: A series of one-shots or mini-arcs, may or may not be connected to each other. I'll be using this fandom to try out some style experiements (only _Quick 2 and _Nothing Left to Prove are peculiar, the others are conventional stories)

**Spoilers**: It is highly recommended that you've finished the game WATCH_DOGS prior to reading. There won't be individual spoiler warnings.

**Updates**: Happen when they do. I try, but I don't always come out on top.

**Warning**: All views expressed are those of the narrating/POV character. A character can be biased, can be wrong, can be lying, can be stupid, can be confused. For some reason, I keep encountering readers who have problems with the concept.

**Timeline: **One-shots aren't in chronological order.

**Artistic licence: **I don't slavishly bow to the limitations of gameplay, but prefer to apply the rules somewhat more flexibly, for the sake of making things both realistic and less formulaic.

**Feedback**: Welcome. _**Due to my viewing statistics, I'm almost more interested in why people STOP reading. Drop me a line. **_

**Brilliancy**: completely pompous title, otherwise a chess term referring to a spectacular game.

* * *

><p><strong>BRILLIANCY<strong>

**by glenarvon** (formerly moondusted)

* * *

><p>[summary: a driver in an illegal street race gives a — slightly drunken — account of events.]<p>

[this takes place at some indeterminable point during the game, or possibly afterward. probably not during the nicky thing.]

**_Quick 2**

* * *

><p>You think I look banged up? Should've seen me five days ago. Yeah, exactly, when the blackout happened. Yeah, I was there. If you buy me a drink, buddy. No, I'm not too deep in drink already, who do you think I am?<p>

Can you turn down that noise? Why's a bar need a TV anyway? If we liked to watch this shit we'd get drunk at home.

Right, so, well. I'm doing these driving gigs, right? Good money, helluva a lot of fun, too. Yeah, Gerry's sponsoring me. Was, anyway, or something, it's still out. Like, everyone's a bit spooked after that time.

It all started harmlessly enough, like, you know, everyday. Sponsors emptied a bucket of cash over the cops, the _right kind _of cops, so they'd keep their fingers out of it, at least as long as it doesn't get too big. Illegal street races, my ass. It's not really illegal when the cops are in on it, is it? Can't be. These guys are the law. Shit if I know.

Where was I?

Ah, yeah, so there's Swift. Used to call him Swift. Damn good driver, too. Always hated having to drive against him, because it's not one of those ironic nicknames that sometimes happen. Like calling a big guy Tiny, you know? No, this guy's _fast_. Like he's riding a unicorn. No idea, man, that's how he described it, once. Pompous ass. But Swift wasn't in the race, had an accident. Natural cause, obviously, fell into a bullet. Happens a lot around here. Where the hell is my drink?

Got a new driver. I dunno who's backing Swift. Never seen the guy. Probably makes no difference. Got an opening, new driver jumps in, seen it before. These guys don't last, usually. If you aren't in the race from the start, there's probably a reason for it.

New driver has a custom, black Vespid 5.2, so he's not a total noob, anyway. The Vespid's a bit slower than most of the others, but it's a solid car and urban racing isn't all about speed. Just gets you smeared on a wall when you miss a corner.

Never seen this dude around, though. Neither the car. I thought maybe he's from out of town or something, just moved here because of some heat elsewhere. Well, top seats are all already taken in Chicago. I thought, that is. Driver guy's creepy, you know the type. All silent and intense, like he's all above your shit.

No, didn't even see his face clearly. What do you think? I'm not some fag, checking out other guys. Wore a baseball cap and his collar up, though, couldn't see much even if I wanted to…

Ah, drink. Took you long enough. What've you doing? Growing grapes?

_Pissing in it. _

Haha fucking ha. I know where you live, buddy.

Creepy driver guy just hangs around before the race starts, glued to his phone, spares us all no look.

Earlier that day, Gerry's taken me aside to tell me something's up tonight, looked worried, Gerry did. Never seen him look like that, but I don't know any of Gerry's business and it's much healthier that way, too. He pays my bills, I drive for him, good deals all around.

So Gerry's worried. After Swift, I get that. Because it's not enough, it starts to rain. It's never a bad race until it rains. I've been there. Good thing this global warming shit means we barely get any ice on the road anymore. Drivers die like flies, then. Sort of the point, come to think of it. Like darwinism.

We draw lots for starting places. Stupid antiquated way, but no one ever listens to us, down in the mud, right? Right.

I get lucky. It's so much easier starting from the front, let me tell you. Race kicks off on the freeway, good early stretch, gives you some decent speed before you get your head in the game on the city streets. Three cars wide, five deep.

So, pole position's always good. Gives you an edge. You've only got two other guys to worry about for the start and you can leave them right behind you if you're fast enough. After that, all you've got to do is ride it home.

The new guy draws a position far behind. Like second to last row, but my lane. He's still too good to say anything, though. I hope he comes home without his teeth.

Just saying! I can't stand those arrogant pricks.

Do you even know how urban races work? Do you? Buy me another and I'll explain it you. I'll use small words, too, so you can follow me. So. Drink!

Anyway, urban races. They don't have like a course or anything. Couldn't mark it on the city streets. Instead, you'll get a start point and an end point, how you get from one to the other's all your own problem. Means you've got to have drivers with a bit of brain, too. You need to know where you're going beforehand, then get there.

Usually, there's like one or two good routes, on the big streets, but of course that's also where traffic is thickest so drivers try not to pack that closely.

Aaaand there's my drink. You know, it looks a bit like piss.

_Why's that, you recon?_

Shut up. Not getting a rise out of me so easily.

I get off on a good start, field well behind me before we dive into the city. Traffic's thick, though, can't go as fast as I like to, need to adjust my course, too. Got blocked on my preferred route, some useless bit of road construction popping up out of nowhere. City should post about these on their website, would make life so much easier. Got two of the others tailing me, too, hanging out in my slipstream. Lost sight of the black Vespid for a bit there.

When I see it again, it's flying. I'm not shitting you! I didn't say it grew wings, damn! Comes over a bridge from the right, must have taken one hell of a detour just to get there that way. Bridge is getting down and I'm not actually paying it any attention because I'm weaving through traffic at nearly 100mph, heading for the traffic lights. You know, how you get like one tiny moment when the crossroads is empty? Because one's already on red and the others haven't accelerated yet? That's my opening and I'm going to be hitting that crossroads perfectly.

But then the Vespid jumps the fucking open bridge, lands in the middle of the crossroads, it makes a tight little spin, that's not even drift, man, fucking car turns like a ballet dancer, brakes howling and the tyres smearing all over the asphalt and it shoots down the lane in _my _fucking opening, right ahead of me.

Except, that's when the traffic lights go crazy and everyone's rushing the crossroads from all directions! One of the fuckers catches my back fender and shoves me into one of these ridiculous compact cars. It's a blue car, I'll remember that forever. Weird. Little fucker's bad enough to do some damage, put a bad dent in my ride. Bumped my elbow.

On the plus side, lost the slipstream guys in the pileup.

But I can't wait it out, not now. I don't even look back. Every man for himself and all that. I still see that damn Vespid's taillights just ahead of me. My car's faster than that, I know. I step on the gas and I love my car! Beautiful 336-TT. Shoots like lightning!

God, _no_ that's not a euphemism! What are you? Gay?

It takes a bit to catch up with that fucker. He's going for the direct way, I can tell. Not a whole lot to worry about for a bit. Just two more crossroads before we are down in Brandon Docks. Gives me a moment to think, that.

What was I thinking, you ask?

Ha ha, yeah, I know how to do that. You know, if you don't want to hear anymore, I'm good just drinking in silence…

See, not so hard. Here we go.

So Brandon Docks means we are now pretty close to the finish line. And if you've ever been down there, you know there are far less good routes left. During the day, you could cut through company premises, but they're all locked up tight at night. Would bring the cops down on us, so no one does that sort of shit. God-fucking-damn Vespid and it's asshole driver do it, though, twice. Ass. Hole.

But I'll get to that. I was telling you what I noticed. You see, because of what it's like and because it's pretty close to the finish, everyone left in the game comes back together. You see all the fuckers again you've lost in the city, trying to come back in in front of you.

This time. This one fucking time, there's just the Vespid. And me, of course. There's _no one else. _Think on that for a moment. Because I did. I mean, there's always _some _loss along the way. Never been in a race where everyone's made it. But I sure as hell were never in the race where it's just two guys.

I finally catch up to the Vespid. Up close, car looks pretty wasted, messed up bumper and trailing a bit of dark smoke. It's not on fire, seen this before, this car's not quite breaking down yet. Probably cost a shitload to fix later, though.

I catch up, just in time for the next traffic light. And you know what happens? You know? The _same fucking thing! _Thing malfunctions big time and all the cars of four directions pile up on me while the Vespid gets clear just about. It's fewer cars here than before, so I managed to get through, screaming metal on metal and all. Something blows up, I can see it my rear-view mirror. Some poor fucker's really not having a good day back there.

The Vespid's fishtailing a bit. My guess is, some axis deformation throwing it off-kilter and that's my chance, right. All weight back on the gas, full throttle and I finally get even with the Vespid. I'm on the left lane, could go bad quickly if there's oncoming traffic. I don't have a whole lot of options to evade. Dammit, I think, if I go out, I'll just swab this stupid Vespid off the road with me. Looks like my car can take the hit better than his, anyway. Nothing comes. In hindsight, I should have taken the chance, but can't help it now.

I'm finally in front. At this point, I can't be sure I'm really in the lead, but I'm good. I made good time, not a lot of waste along the way other then the weird crossroads shit and that little detour before, nothing I can't catch.

The Vespid can't keep up at this point, I can tell it tries for a moment, fishtails harder and then begins to fall back. I catch it swerve to the right, though, and I think it's about to crash into one of the premise gates, but the damn thing just swings open!

You know, I swallow a lot of coincidence. I've never being paid enough to worry about it, but this shit? Traffic lights, I get. Damn things malfunction all the time, but private companies keep their security tighter than that. I still don't get it, no idea what was going on that night.

At the time, I can't really waste much time on it, either. Street's winding ahead of me, pretty damn narrow so I better get my head back there, before some useless concrete boulder materialises in front of me.

So, I'm actually dumb enough to think I've made it. Half a mile to the finish, if I could go by beeline, but it's still pretty good and no sight of any competition.

That is, you guessed it, until the black Vespid from hell just comes out of nowhere, from between staked containers. I almost didn't see it. It's broken most of it's lights. It slithers right in front of me and accelerates away and I let it go because I'm kind of in shock. Not like I couldn't catch it or anything.

I'm not an idiot, either. So next time the little motherfucker tries the gate thing, I think to myself _fuck it _and I just glue myself to his tail. Turns out to be a middling good idea. It's gravel paths there and the Vespid's got the better grip on those and I have no interest in smashing into a steel container at full speed. Bad enough I still got an aching elbow from that first collision.

For now, I just keep up, Vespid goes where I want to and I know we've got another bit of straight street where I can take it no problem. Thing is, as we're heading back there, the gate begins to close right in front of me. Vespid through, gate closing. Scratched my car up pretty bad on all sides, nearly got stuck, too. Could have torn a tyre on the things and that would've been it for me.

Vespid's used the chance to gain some distance and it's down to the last bit, one more corner and the finish line. Never deserved it better than this one, seriously.

Next drink. I need another drink for that part. Seriously.

Because next thing that happens is, my phone stars vibrating. Don't laugh at me! I keep the thing in my back-pocket. I didn't think of it! No one I know is dumb enough to call when I'm in a race. I'd go find them and make them eat their phones.

_Did you enjoy getting your ass vibed?_

Give me the drink and piss the fuck off!

Distracted the hell out of me, and no, _not _the hell _that way,_ but there is that turn coming up and I kind get my priorities backward, because it's like this race is haunted, right. Can pull your cool out right under your feet. So I'm angling for the phone and I've only got one hand on the wheel and I should have one on the handbrake because that corner's a mean motherfucker all its own.

I crash into a site fence. Doesn't do much new damage, but tangles me up anyway. I bring the car back on the road and I think that I could still catch the black Vespid. It doesn't get much straight speed and I can still catch up to it.

And yes, my friend, that's when the blackout hit. And I mean _hit. _CtOS box just blows up right at my side, sparks flying and shit. You know that sound that electricity makes? Like a whip. Gonna dream of that for a while. Brandon Docks goes pitch-black from one moment to the next, with just the flying sparks all around.

And like, some little shit of an idiot put up some tanks _right _by the damn box. Shit, I could have died right there…

Explosion gets hold of my car and throws it around, tosses it around. Can't see straight and shit's going down fucking fast, man. I crash into something hard and I've got the time to think that this is bad, it's the bad one.

Smells like burning rubber.

My head hits the steering wheel and I go out like the fucking lights.

In the end, I _walk _to the finish line. Isn't far and everyone's a bit confused by that point. Juice still isn't there and as you know, took like a day for it, fire did some damage to the net or something. So everything looks pretty eerie, lit by just phone-flashlights and cars.

The Vespid's smouldering on it's own just behind the finish and the driver faces off against some of the sponsors. Gerry's there, too. Gives me one hell of an evil eye. But what the hell was I supposed to do? It was like driving against the whole damn city!

"It's an illegal street race," the driver pointed out, gravelly voiced all level and shit, like he isn't talking to big time mob money right there. "Which rules did I break?"

The sponsors don't have much of a good argument for that. Looking around, it's what I thought. I'm the only other driver in the finish at all, even if I come without my car.

I heard from some of the others. One got lost on a detour, but all of the others had some freak accidents. Traffic lights, road blockers, evil bridges. One got blown to hell by a rupturing steam pipe. And I mean that literally. Guys like us, we don't get to go to Heaven.

Technically, there are no rules against winning because your opponents all suffer weird accidents. Not like he's caused them, right? Or, yeah, well. Wake up and smell the bullshit. Race was rigged from the start, mark my words.

"I win?" driver asshole asks, all calm-like. He knows he had. What you gonna tell him? No, shit, obviously one of those who didn't make it won? Not like they couldn't force exactly that kind of decision, but it'd, well, it'd look bad. Driver asshole's right, there aren't _rules _as such, but gunning him down now would make everyone look like sour losers, especially in front of the others.

Gerry looks like he's about to tear him a new one, but doesn't. Looks like backing down from where I'm standing, but I've never seen Gerry do that, so it must've been something else. Gerry doesn't get _stared down. _

"If this is your first _and_ last race," Gerry concedes.

"Don't do me any favours," driver asshole says.

"Yeah yeah, get outta here before I change my mind."

He doesn't right away. Pulls one hand from his pocket, calls someone.

I've managed to hobble closer. Gerry's going to give me an earful, and then he'll wait until I'm all healed up to punch me out again, I just know it. Couldn't he take it out on the deserving party?

Driver catches my gaze. Must have stared at him, couldn't help it. What the fuck was wrong with this guy? What the hell _is he? _Looks a bit familiar, now that I'm looking straight at him. Seen him around? I'm not sure, I'm _still _not sure. I'd remember him.

"Not bad," he tells me, wandering past, puts the phone to his ear and then dismisses me completely. Arrogant… fucking…asshole _motherfucker. _Yes, despite the damn compliment. That was just driving the point home! How stupid are you?

I hear a bit of the conversation he has on the phone. Kind of reassuring he's like that to everyone, right?

_"That's what you get. You wanted me to win the race, I won the race. No thanks to your backmarker. — No, I don't work for 'shits and giggles', Jordi. — Oh, did I? As long as you can't prove it, it's not a freebie."_

So that's it. My story of the urban blackout race. Bit of a misnomer, if you ask me. Just got a blackout at the end, like a finale or something.

Got a concussion and I'm out of a job, more than likely, because Gerry's all kinds of pissed. All the others are, too. I'm not going to work in this town again. Which is funny, isn't? Because I'm like the only one who even got to the finish, the others don't get nearly as much flag. Like it's worse to trip on the last step. And don't go telling me I wasn't tripped. That was some fucked up shit going on right there…

_Holyshitthat'shim!_ On the news! Turn it up, will you? I need to hear this!

He's the… ? Fuuck. Oh god, oh shit. I definitely need another drink now. I was driving against _him? _Damn… I bet Gerry's relieved he didn't try him, though. Gotta gloat about this later, definitely going to be worth it.

Still, makes you wonder, what that race could've been like? How much _worse_ it could've been? I play poker with some Fixers sometimes, now there are guys with _true_ horror stories, I swear.

* * *

><p><em>End of [Quick 2]<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Reference: <strong>Quick _8 _are the fastest 8 in a drag race.

**Author's Note: **I don't know anything about motorsports. I know very little about cars. I made 'urban street racing' up, but it seems like a viable way to do it.

_It was fun writing in this way (I've wanted to try it in forever, but didn't have a good scenario until now.) Thank you for reading! I hope you had some fun doing that!_


	2. Quaint Old World

**Notes:** Phone design taken from LG Flutter Concept Phone.

The representation of this future world owes a great deal to the works of Ken MacLeod (The Execution Channel and Intrusion, particularly) and maybe a little bit to Richard K. Morgan's books Market Forces and Black Man/Thirteen. Very little of that actually makes it into the story, but this is how I envisioned it. Things were left intentionally vague and as snap-shots.

* * *

><p><em>[this takes place roughly twenty-five years after the events of the main game]<em>

**_Quaint Old World**

* * *

><p>A new car is parked outside the cabin, pristinely clean and ecologically small. It looks like a toy beside a mud-smeared off-road motorcycle leaning closer to the cabin and partially covered up against the weather. The last model to still be sold with a combustion engine, making the bike heavier than newer models, but with more power behind it.<p>

Two men are sitting on a small table in a cabin. One still young, the other older, greying with a gaunt face and hair shot through with silvery grey. Despite this, there is some resemblance, not quite striking, but visible, in the play of light and shadow and more so, in the way they move.

There is no tablecloth, because it hasn't occurred to the older to waste time on such draperies. Not that he _hasn't _time, but it doesn't occur anyway. He has served coffee, though, and its scent and varied flavour lent the moment unexpected tranquility.

The sun is high in the air, casting golden autumn light through the small windows of the cabin and it's equally small, tidy interior.

"There is no middle ground anymore," the older one says. "There is _off the grid _and _in the system._ No wriggle room, no grey spaces." He pauses for a moment, considers. "No backdoors, either."

The younger one looks around the room, at the workbench in the corner, strewn now as well as ever with dissembled high-tech gadgets, lurking in the dark with the work-light turned off. He knows the electricity is supplied by a generator and the fuel delivered by the old owner of the local pub every month. An oven, pitched-black, charred metal disperses heat from a wood-fire, more than enough to warm the cabin, even if winter is hard, which is increasingly rarely the case.

He's responsible for some of these gadgets on the workbench. He buys whatever he thinks might interest his uncle and dumps it on him, whenever he can find an excuse to drive out here. He buys whatever won't put him on a watch-list. _My uncle likes to tinker. A bit eccentric in his old age, you know? Yeah, tell me about it. Dying breed, right? _He can't be sure he _isn't _on a watch-list, but it was safe to assume it's not the right kind, or they couldn't be sitting here and share coffee.

Today, he could have done without the excuse.

"I'm sorry, Jacks," the older one says. He leans back in his seat, watches him.

"It's mom's funeral," Jackson says and is surprised how meek his voice sounds. In that moment, he can't quite remember why it should even matter. He _knows _these things, he knows his uncle can't come and it's childish and stupid to think he might find a way.

His uncle studies him, calm in the face of the news of her death. "Let me paint you a picture, kid."

And he does, and just that he bothers at all is all the proof Jackson needs. How much this matters to him and how much he wants to go. But there is no way, really. Road surveillance will pick him up, ten miles down the road, at the utmost, superhydrophobic lenses on cameras, pristinely clean even in the wild and the dirt kicked up from the badly-kept road. Trans-material biometric mapping scanning his face no matter where he turned.

Tracking drones will take to the skies, herd them, like cattle, to exactly where the police find it convenient to pick them up. "Have you ever _seen_ a swarm of those?" his uncle asks.

He hasn't, but he's heard of it. Tracking drones will herd you, like cattle, to exactly where the police find it convenient to pick you up. He shakes his head.

"You don't want to," his uncle asserts. He doesn't tell the story, but Jackson knows of it already. Those were still the vigilante days and tracking drones were barely past the prototype stage, guarding and handful of sensitive structures around the city to see how they performed.

Jackson knows _of _the story, not how it had played out all those years ago. His uncle and his precious secrets and this seems just a minor thing, all things considered.

Jackson thinks of leaving it at that. He could finish the coffee and head home, prepare for the funeral on his own, head over to Deliah, fall asleep in her arms. It doesn't seem such a bad version of events.

All his life, Jackson has known himself to be part of two worlds. There has always been something that didn't quite match when he compared himself to anyone he has ever met in all his life. He has a different kind of history, however little he sometimes saw it reflected in his life.

He has this.

"Maybe there's a way to trick the system," Jackson hears himself say. "Just for an hour or two."

He looks up. "Criminals do it all the time, too."

"And then they get caught," his uncle says. "I've seen the statistics."

"You believe them?" Jackson asks surprised. Because he sure as hell believes _nothing _official.

Something tiny, almost like a smile, crosses his uncle's face. "Perhaps it would be better to say, I've seen the raw numbers and I can do the math."

Jackson thinks about this. His uncle is a man of many secrets, surely he would be able to keep a few from his nephew for his own sake, if nothing else.

Have you recently tried paying in cash in a store? It's frowned upon, even here in the sticks, though technically still a viable method, it's like announcing your intention of committing a crime over loudspeaker. His uncle grows his own food and hunts in the woods, what else he needs, he'll find someone to bring it to him.

He is off the grid. It doesn't mean a clever man can't hold on to some connections.

"On average, it takes twelve minutes to solve a crime, less than a day for an arrest," his uncle says. "At least once you disregard crimes you can't hide in front of a cam."

And it's shocking because Jackson is right, you can't believe the official numbers. They are _worse. _Makes you think, doesn't it? What reason does the government have to make it's crime statistics worse?

The answer is, of course, because the real numbers would spook the hell out of you, spark paranoia in even the most trusting of souls.

Jackson has one last argument. He isn't entirely sure he should use, has been debating back and forth on the way. But the deal has already been done, the _damage _has already been done, after a hasty, sneaky, awkward and starkly dangerous deal with a member of an endangered species: a Fixer.

"I got some stuff from the black market," Jackson says. He picks up his backpack and puts it on the table between them, letting it sit there, beside cups full of coffee so black it might just as easily be tar.

His uncle's first instinct, Jackson can see, is to be angry with him, for taking a stupid risk, _any _risk at all. Jackson talks fast, while he still can, while the discussion might still go where it needs to.

"This is Blume tech," he says. "State of the art. This is the stuff the cops have, the agencies. This is what theyuse, right now. Barely twenty-four hours out of date. This…" he points at the backpack like it's some sacred, long-sought after treasure out of a fairy tale. And perhaps it is. "If there's no opening in _this _then we are all doomed."

His uncle doesn't move, gaze hovering between Jackson and the backpack, lined face set in a stony calm Jackson has never quite managed not to dread, even though he is the only person _safe_ in its presence.

"How?" he asks, voice gone breathless. Awed. Disbelieving. "I burned DedSec trying to get my hands on this stuff."

Despite himself, despite everything Jackson knows or suspects, this takes him by surprise. DedSec has been gone for decades. Rarely, some lone hacker claims their name as they are dragged off to court, but whether there is ever anything more substantial to it, Jackson doesn't want to guess. For all he knows, for all his instincts tell himn, DedSec is gone. It went down in one long long night in a wave of house searches and arrests, leaving a different world behind.

It was only a week before his uncle finally declared his own retreat to the hinterlands. It was funny, though, DedSec and the vigilante both had a habit of cropping up in urban myth anyway, ever since, in a manifestation of an anarchistic streaks their brave new world has yet failed to breed out of them all.

"It's… complicated," Jackson finally says. "My girlfriend's mother was DedSec, but she grew up with her father, there were no records, right? And when the New Register Act hit, she lied her way out of it, like I did."

New Register was the curtain call. If you were a hacker, or a gang-banger, or a mobster, or anything other than an honest citizen, this was your last chance to use your opening. New Register created a database of everyone, all their information, stored in one place. There _were _protests, but the government sold it on how beneficial it was, cutting down on bureaucracy in so many small ways, the protests never gained enough momentum to roll over the Act.

His uncle had used it weave a new identity for him out of thin air and then taken it and ran, all the way out here. Not doubt in much the same way many others had done. And then, New Register closed all the old doors, keeping you locked on whatever side you'd chosen.

His uncle had also used it to sever himself from Jackson, reduce the name to nothing more than a coincidence. _No no, I'm not _the _Jackson Pearce. You wouldn't believe how often I get that. Here, it's all in my files, I'm not bullshitting you._ _Helps with small talk on parties, though. _

"Like we all did," his uncle echoes. "Everyone knew how the wind was blowing."

"Yeah," Jackson agrees. "So, she holds a grudge. And she knows people, and _they_ know people. Made them trust me. I kept you out of it all, I swear."

Jackson pauses, rests his gaze on the backpack. "Look, does it matter? Isn't it possible the government's become a little careless? It's been twenty years of almost smooth sailing. They've destroyed DedSec, driven you out, Blume's practically running the country, why shouldn't they become complacent on their laurels?"

When his uncle moves, finally, breaking a spell Jackson hasn't realised is there, it's to put a long-boned hand on the backpack, pull it towards himself. He opens the magzip and it hisses quietly as it releases.

It's a fascinating thing, his uncle's face as he examines the contents and Jackson has never been entirely sure how to read him. There is a crease worn down between his eyebrows, deep gashes on the sides of his mouth, corners slanted downward. Bags under his eyes from age rather than lack of sleep. It occurs to Jackson that he's an old man and this is the promise of his youth and perhaps it's unfair to give it to him, even for an hour, even if he can only use it to mourn his sister.

His uncle looks up, catches and holds Jackson's gaze. There is a spark there, something _new, _Jackson thinks at first, but corrects himself immediately. It's not new, the opposite in fact. This is old, some residue of fires.

It's the worst kept secret, if Jackson has ever seen it, that his uncle hates the countryside. He's bored out of his wits. There's just so much you can do with low-end gadgets on a workbench and without any network access worth the term.

"This isn't for a funeral," his uncle observes. Reaches in and pulls out the phone and it opens in his hands like a fan, thin, flexible screen between blackly metallic guardsticks. It boots at his touch, springs to life and he snaps it closed again.

Jackson has never seen anything nearly as sophisticated as this phone in his uncle's hands, but he seems to have no trouble grasping the concept.

"It is," Jackson says. "It's only for that. That's the deal, uncle. You don't go… do… the things you did. Because I don't want to go to your funeral, too. Not when mom isn't even in the ground yet. I want you to be at my wedding, all right? I want you to hold your grandchildren."

A smile steals itself onto his uncle's face, a little rueful, but his eyes have yet to lose their curious glitter.

"Easy there," he says mildly. "Don't go wasting all your ammo on the first shot."

But Jackson won't give in, "You promise me. With this stuff? You can come and go, if you don't attract attention. It'll work for years. There's no reason why it shouldn't."

His uncle laughs, a deep-throated, self-deprecating sound, but not without genuine humour, or warmth.

"Come on, I'm kidding, Jacks," he says. "I'm not going to be running and gunning through Chicago. Those days are gone."

He glances down at the phone. "I don't even know if I can find a way to trick the system, but I'll try."

He looks up. "I'll try and I'll come to the funeral."

Jackson takes a breath, doesn't realise how much he has needed to until he does, weight off his chest from one moment to the next, setting him free.

"Thanks," he whispers. "It… it means a lot."

For a moment, the sparkling humour is gone and his uncle nods gravely.

It's an accident, though, of chance and circumstance that makes his mother's funeral and his acquisition of the hardware fall into the same moment. He's planned to get and give these things to his uncle for many years, but the chance has never come before. But it's a good thing, it'd be hard to rein in his uncle, if he's set his mind on something. And his mother is one of the few people to hold any weight in this equation, even now that she's dead. Or perhaps because of it.

It's the best Jackson can do. He's fairly sure it's the best his uncle can do, too.

* * *

><p>It's still early in the evening when Jackson drives home, the low humming of the electric motor his only companion. His Radio has suggested a few appropriate songs for the occasion, but he's declined. He'll need to face the thoughts in his own head, make up his own mind while he can hear himself think.<p>

He passes a swarm of sleek tracking drones, hovering over the hills for a moment, then congealing behind him like a black cloud visible in his rear-view mirror.

His heart skips, than tries to beat itself out of his chest, choking his throat. He sits there, petrified, for a much longer than he realises. He doesn't know what to do, like he's a little boy again and his world spins completely out of his control.

* * *

><p>There is nothing on the news. Nothing at all. Jackson doesn't believe them, but through lies they tell, they still sometimes reveal some shards of truth.<p>

What is he to make of this? Surely, _someone _would wish to gloat? It's not the triumph it could've been, not the victory it would have been if Chicago's infamous vigilante had been brought down twenty years earlier. It's more difficult to conjure a good headline out of a lonely old man in a cabin. No doubt it could be done, though.

Yet. _Nothing. _

* * *

><p>The rain is heavy, beating down like the end of the world on the graveyard, like it's trying to wash them all away, sweep clean the decades of dirt and grime from all the gravestones. Simultaneously revealing the names on all the graves and hiding them behind a thick curtain of grey.<p>

Jackson's memory of Lena has grown hazy over the years. It's too long and he was too young. He's never completely figured out how her loss was supposed to make him feel. He still doesn't know and he's tired of therapists giving him the same useless advise over and over again. His life is under his control, as much as can be said for anyone, and he's decreed that it be enough.

He clings to Deliah throughout, much more than he wants to. He's uncomfortable, more than she is, but she says nothing, is just _there _because she knows what it means, what all of this means to him.

His uncle isn't there. It shouldn't be surprising, but Jackson has no answers to what has happened. His best guess is that the government tech was being tracked, automatically and was doubtlessly flagged as stolen. It hasn't been the _deal, _but Jackson couldn't exactly go and ask for a refund.

Deliah settles her head on his shoulder and water runs down into the back of his coat.

* * *

><p>It takes far too long until he works up the courage to go back to the cabin, chastising himself all the way. Should have been earlier, should have turned around then and there and raced after the swarm. Make some kind of bullshit statement, burn the life he had built to the ground in one big conflagration. A great last stand.<p>

He doesn't. He can't. His mother wouldn't want him to. His uncle wouldn't. Deliah might cheer, but she wouldn't want him to, either.

He goes back, eventually. Under a pretext, a good story, in case someone asks awkward questions.

Instead, the cabin is deserted. No, not just empty, but _tidy. _Nothing on the workbench, most of the clothes gone from the wardrobe. Someone cleaned this out, took everything useful. Could be a neighbour, though. Or it could be…

Dust dances in sunlight rays and the silence sure as hell lacks the compassion to finish the thought for him.

* * *

><p>It's weeks later. A month. Two. Half a year.<p>

He asks Deliah to marry him. It's old-fashioned, but he wants her, formally, forever.

Life goes on.

He still doesn't have any answers.

* * *

><p>The morning is murky, ugly in the aftermath of the first blackout in sixteen years. It's thrown the city into more chaos than Jackson has ever seen since he was a teenager. He wanders out on the balcony and lights a cigarette. His phone warns him about the health risk and sends an automatic notification to his insurance company.<p>

_Go right ahead, _he thinks glumly. _Keep that up and we'll see how you deal with a nine-story drop. _

The smoke burns down his throat, acrid and bitter and, yeah, got to admit that, pretty damn awful. Stupid habit, like he can't think of another way to show some defiance. What is he? Fifteen?

His phone announces a call, cheerfully subservient as if their previous discord has never happened.

He lets it wail for a full minute. It asks if it should take a message.

"Yeah!" he snaps. Why has he ever though that voice interface was a good idea? It's like he's got himself a nagging spouse, because Deliah didn't want to play the part.

The phone stops, though, taking his message and he has a moment of peace. He gets through the cigarette with his pride intact, though feeling slightly queasy, smoking on an empty stomach. Such private acts of defiance, they never are quite as satisfying as you imagine them beforehand.

He heads back inside and sets himself to make breakfast. He puts the phone down on the counter as he busies himself and let's it finally spew out the message.

It's distorted, odd enough for a high-tech call and there are odd lags between the words, making it hard to decipher at first and it confuses him for an endless minute. Too long, surely, for a voice this deep and this distinctive.

_"I'm sorry I couldn't make it to Nicky's funeral. I made a promise and I broke it. Wasn't my choice, but there it is. I stand by what I said, however: No more running and gunning. But there are other things for me to do. You shouldn't worry. _

_I'm not going to be at your wedding, either, but congratulations to the both of you. Tell Deliah she's made a good match, but I could be biased. Don't forget that you owe me some grandchildren." _

Jackson turns on his heels, draws a thin line of coffee after him from the cup he holds askew.

Later, he will be vaguely grateful he's painstakingly made sure most of the cameras in his house recorded the back of flowerpots, piles of books, the edge of a box or the heel of Deliah's favourite boots and _not _his stupid expression for whoever's watching.

_"Oh, I made sure this message deletes itself after you've listened to it, I hope you've been paying attention."_

* * *

><p><em>End of _Quaint Old World<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Additional References: <strong>The title is an obvious pun on 'Brave New World'. I'll try to be more clever next time.

**Author's Note: **I wanted to be ambigious about Jackson's lover. You know, gender-neutral name and never a pronoun, but it required a lot of awkward phrasing or removing many direct mentions. It disrupted the flow of the story.

I _think _I messed up references to how much time has passed a little bit. I went over it to fix everything but I can't guarantee it. On the other hand, there are mentions to how long ago the end of the game was, as well as how long ago Aiden's retirement was. Those aren't the same numbers.

Lastly, I'm not completely satisfied with the ending. I don't _know _what he's gonna do now. I'd love a glorious return to old form, but I don't think that's on the table. I don't really deal with happy endings, but let's give him a good last run, shall we? There _may _be a second part to this eventually.

_**Happy reading!**_


	3. Black Magic

_[this takes place soon after the main events of the game_, but before fox hunt in the bad blood dlc._]_

**_Black Magic**

* * *

><p><em>Audio Log #06: Aiden Pearce.<em>

_"It's an elaborate con and complex systems tend to produce complex errors. It's my own safety net and it can just as easily break my neck." _

* * *

><p>Charlotte Gardner was alone in her office, working late as she usually did. It was silent, save for the quiet hum of the ventilation and it was dark, save for the light on her desk and the screen of her computer. Outside her office, a security guard was on his patrol. He was used to her schedule and didn't interrupt her.<p>

On some days, her secretary stuck around well into the after hours, but he still usually left her before midnight. It was now well _past _midnight and she considered letting it go for the night and heading home, heading into a weekend. Or at least what was left of it at this point.

Being split two ways between her duties to Blume and her newly acquired responsibilities to Chicago had done nothing to increase her free-time. If she kept going like this, she would be eaten alive and it would help no one.

No, instead, she would run for mayor and leave her job at Blume behind. It would assuage those voices who worried about too much power in one hand, for one. For another, she could do a better job if she could give it her all.

The public didn't seem to quite realise the importance of loyaty here, with all their worries about her ties to Blume. Just because she would no longer be working for them, didn't mean she would forget her duty to the company. Neither did she like the thought of leaving her successor with more unsolved problems than necessary, though, thus her work hours.

Blume was having a difficult time, though the rest of the city need not know about it. ctOS was not a secure system. She was no programmer, but she understood enough to listen to what actual programmers were telling her when she asked. Raymond Kenney _was _ctOS. He had backdoors in his backdoors, he had trojans and viruses aplenty should he need any kind of access at all. ctOS would probably dance polka if he send the right signal. Raymond Kenney was everywhere and ctOS had been completely blinded to him.

There was no way to get rid of him now, not when so much of the source code bore his handwriting, when so much of the software was his creation. You'd have to start from scratch, completely from scratch, if you wanted to purge him. Kenney was a genius, no one with any sense would deny that. Leaning on the madness side, apparently, but it made him no less inscrutable to those who were supposed to sniff out wayward pieces of code, all the bits and hooks he had planted over the years.

Replacing ctOS was out of the question, of course. They could do it _— maybe — _if they had a new OS to roll out, but any outage of the network would cost them, not just money, but also trust. It would paralyse the entire city and after recent events, it wouldn't go over well. People needed peace and stability now, more than anything.

Then there was the entire tiresome problem of Aiden Pearce to be dealt with. If Kenney, for all intents and purposes, _was _the system, then Pearce was at least _in _the system, too. Except, while there was nothing else positive that could be said about Kenney, _Kenney_ was familiar. He had trained some of their programmers and worked closely with others here at Blume. His tricks were at least _known, _even if they could not, at this point, be eliminated. Pearce was an unknown on all counts and not shy to diverge from Kenney's known inroads. There was just no telling just how deep he'd buried himself in their system by now.

Pearce was invisible to ctOS. He didn't show up on scans, the systems didn't identify him, they had never been able to track him. He was a ghost, a spectre, haunting them at every turn, who never showed his face unless _he_ wanted to.

Ironically, his own fame wreaked havoc on his own sophisticated camouflage.

People on the streets recognised him and plastered pictures all over their social media accounts, they wrote about it, chatted to their friends, mentioned it in emails and phone calls. You could get to him that way, certainly. In the beginning, everyone had been optimistic, they could map his movements just using the trace he left on other people's digital footprints. Yes, Chicagoans professed their admiration and respect for him, but they didn't seem to quite realise he was a wanted criminal, too.

Eventually, patterns would have to emerge from this raw and random data, she knew as much and from that pattern, Pearce would find himself caught in a web woven entirely by his most fervent cheerleaders. That, at least, had been the idea she pitched to the police mere days after she came into office as interim mayor.

Except, it never came through. A few weeks earlier, popular photo apps started showing severe geolocation malfunctions. In fact, al locations, regardless of where the picture was obviously taken, would be pinpointed, without fail to the same location in the Russian tundra. And a little while later, all pictures presumably depicting the vigilante were badly blurred out.

Gardner sighed as she skimmed through the mail the programmers had sent her. Basically, what happened was that the phone would scramble the images themselves, once they picked up a certain signal. What signal? No idea. How can you tell the shape of a key by looking at the lock?

Can't you?

It's not so easy.

So there was that. On bad days, she hoped Chicagoans would eventually just tire of him, tire of the constant chaos that followed him, inevitably, through the city. One day, one too many innocent bystanders would have been hurt in whatever crusade he thought he was on. They needed just one person, in the end, only one to point a finger and say _I know where he sleeps. _

Then there was DedSec. There was a rumour going around that some of their own employees were secretly funnelling information their way. Nothing had ever be confirmed or proven, no names had come up that couldn't be dropped after just an hour of investigation. But the ease with which DedSec came and went implied there was more to it than just grapevine.

DedSec are a strange little unity, she thought. Anarchistic. _Archaic, _come to think of it. A bunch of kids, hung up on hippie ideals they were probably too young to even remember, it always seemed to her, always on the edge of going that one step too far toward radicalisation. They'd tear it all down, the work of so many, the _betterment _of so much, on nothing more than idle, juvenile fantasy.

She didn't think DedSec understood their own role in all of this, or knew where they wanted to go. They had no goal for future she could discern in any of their piggybacked message. They were just _against Blume. _Not much of an agenda. It would be a mistake to dismiss them because of it, of course, they could and did do substantial damage. If there was some way to take them out of the game, Gardner already had the press release ready. She had enjoyed writing that one.

And then, there was one last thorn she needed to survey tonight. A new hacker had been making the rounds for a few weeks. Hellbent, more than any of the others, just to do as much damage as he could and if damage couldn't be had, he'd settle for mayhem. Blume was a favourite target, but all public authority seemed fair game, the police especially. Just recently, Blume had been called in to rectify what turned out to be a massive system breach within Chicago PD's internal servers wherein all passwords had been set to 'yourmother'. Occasionally, well-to-do citizens of Chicago would find they had donated substantial amounts of money to charity, though apparently without having been asked first.

He was obviously hung up on some backwards idea of Robin Hood, this particular hacker, but that didn't make him anything less of a threat. He liked to sign his work, too, called himself BlackMage. Eventually, this piece of egotism would lead to his capture, making it easier to track him.

DedSec had disavowed him, the same way they habitually did with Pearce. Gardner wasn't sure why DedSec would bother with either. It seemed like a tactical mistake. Why not present a united front for your enemy and keep your internal disagreements, well, _internal? _

It's what she always advised on such things, but apparently DedSec neither had, nor perhaps wanted, a PR professional. Far be it from her to begrudge her enemies such a mistake.

A small red flag lit up at the bottom of her screen, followed by a popup demanding her immediate attention and it made the blood in her veins fun cold. _This _was what they had been waiting for for a long time, never sure _if _it would ever come. The message would be sent to any executive still in the building when it happened. And since it wasn't exactly her area of expertise, there were no others.

She sat, hands still hovering above the keyboard. She could set off a silent alarm. She _should _do it, probably, mobilise their security personnel instantly instead of leaving them blind and in the dark about the threat. If this was it, at all, and therein lay the problem. Circumstantial, flimsy clues, if that. Nothing more to go on, the last trap designed when no one at Blume had any idea left what else to do.

Black glass walls set her office apart from her outer office, all of it sheathed in low late-night illumination and a great expanse of darkness.

The sliding door opened, quietly moving on its rails. Never before had it occurred to her just how little protection a wall of glass offered. But these were her innermost thoughts and she was a professional, well-versed in handling difficult and delicate situations. If you lost your composure, you lost everything.

She forced the lump in her throat down and plastered earnest calm and mild surprise on her face, watched as the vigilante stepped from the shadows and into the small circle of light cast from her desk. Easy to recognise him, even if he hadn't come the way he had. What little untampered footage of him they had, they had analysed to death, but the reality of him, the sheer, solid _three-dimensionalit_y of him was something she hadn't expected. Not quite as hulking as she expected, tall, but not huge, not as broad. Same cap, though, shadowing his face even now, weathered leather coat, fraying edges and battered in one too many firefights.

The heavy fall of the coat hid any weapons he might be wearing underneath it, hands tucked away in the pockets and he looked almost too casual, like this was _nothing, _like walking into a top floor office of Blume was something he'd do on a slow Sunday evening to stave off boredom.

"How many families will I have to give news of their loved ones deaths?" she asked.

"None, coming in." he said quietly. His voice was very deep. They had no recording of it. "Leaving, will be up to you."

She looked down at her screen and the notice still visible there. She said, "I knew you'd be coming. We are keeping statistics of equipment malfunction. In the last hour they increased by 97.6%."

She looked up. "You're like a demon out of some medieval tale: portents precede your arrival."

"Yeah," he said, unimpressed. "And you did nothing to stop me."

If he worried about potential traps, he gave no sign of it. And it_ had_ been meant to be a trap, but it wasn't set, they didn't know he'd ever come or that the statistics were anything more than shots in the dark.

"Why are you here?" she asked. "What do you want?"

He didn't answer immediately, elected instead to pace a few steps, the length of her office, stopping by a corner and turning to face her again.

"I heard you were running for mayor," he said and it was an obvious opening move. DedSec had certainly already picked up on it and were campaigning against her with everything they had. So far, people seemed more annoyed by DedSec's hi-jacking of their newscasts than swayed by what they were saying. Gardner hadn't quite expected Pearce on the same bandwagon.

"Why wouldn't I?" she asked with a levity she certainly didn't feel. "I have been doing the work and I do it well. Don't think I don't know what you did. You turned Chicago into a battlefield and these scars are a long way from being healed. What Chicago needs now is…"

"Anything but another speech," he interrupted and she fell silent as if he'd put her on mute. He paced back to the centre of the room, stepped forward so he was facing her across the desk.

"I did some digging," he said. "And you know it's strange, your biography is exemplary. Perfect little family, idyllic childhood, good grades all the way back. You were class representative three successive years and you won a school beauty pageant once. Commendation letters from teachers and professors. Blume hired you right out of college. You live in a surprisingly modest apartment in the Loop."

It was strange to listen to him recite all these things without much inflection or indeed, any indication what he thought about any of it. Of course, most of her personal information was public, in her position, trying to keep secrets rarely paid off.

"You've been with your partner, Simon Ahern, for eight years now," Pearce continued in the same low, neutral tone. "But you're going to announce your engagement pretty soon, obviously, because…"

"How do you know that? We told no one!"

"Engagement party invitation concepts on Simon's laptop," he said and the first show of emotion at all seemed to be faint amusement. "Drop the golden flower design, if you want my opinion, it's a bit too much."

She narrowed her eyes. "If this is some kind of veiled threat…"

"No no, I'm coming to that, if you'd let me finish?"

She wasn't stupid enough not to know that he was playing some more complicated game here, something other than citing her own biography to her and casually mentioning that, no, he wasn't just in Blume's system, but everywhere else he goddamn pleased.

"So here's the strange part. Of over two million people in Chicago, you are apparently the only one without _any _dirty laundry."

"That's it?" she asked, she almost had to laugh. "That's _all? _You… accuse me of being… not dirty? What is that? Is it beyond your imagination that someone is actually exactly what they seem? You've been spending too much time with Viceroys and Club members. It's skewed your perception."

"There is no one without anything to hide."

"You'd know all about that, wouldn't you?" she said with more of a sneer than she wanted. "Your record is far from clean."

He shrugged. "Homicide, aggravated assault, grand theft auto, computer tampering and fraud, identity theft, and I text while I drive."

She shook her head, barely exaggerated sadness there. "You aren't even ashamed. Your fans in the street, they don't see you for what you are. Not yet. They will eventually, you realise that, don't you?"

"If you could make any of that stick, you'd have done it a long time ago."

He was right, too. She had a very ugly smear campaign ready to go at a moment's notice. She had the numbers, even some of the footage, to show everyone just how little of the vigilante was actually viable hero material. He _helped _people, sometimes, when they didn't happen to be in his way, when he didn't need to use and discard them for some other end. Sometimes that end seemed to be nothing more than his personal gain, like he was charging some kind of vigilante tax from the owners of online banking accounts throughout the city. She could _prove _those things. It wasn't PR trickery at all. If he ever had to stand trial, he'd never see the light of day again.

To be unable to use all this against him was aggravating, but he was right. Any attempt by any official source, Blume or the city or even some coveted attempts, to bring him into disrepute, would just romanticise him further in the eyes of the public. She needed to bide her time, they all did.

She took a deep breath and decided to drop the topic. "I ask again," she said sharply. "You come here, do all this, just to tell me my record is clean?"

"I'm telling you your record sounds like a fairy story," he said, matching her tone. "What will I find if I dig a little deeper? What do you think? Do you want me to?"

"Dig all you want," she said with clenched-teeth defiance. "There is nothing there, you won't find anything."

"Really?" he asked lightly. He pulled his hand from his pocket, black-gloved hand and the phone it held, looked down at it contemplatively. He was playacting, she could tell. He probably didn't even _need _the phone for any of what he was saying.

Despite everything, Gardner caught herself wondering what their programmers could do with that phone if they ever got their hands on it. They could probably tear Aiden Pearce out of ctOS, like bad weed, roots and all.

"Here's a very sad story," he said, as if he'd just spotted it. As he spoke, he slowly wandered around her desk and came entirely too close for comfort when he leaned against the table by her side. "Cyber-bullying one of your professors. Your friends here at Blume did a good job at hiding it, but that's the drawback of a system designed to preserve information, it just never goes away completely."

He looked down and directly at her.

"Poor woman killed herself," he observed with a kind of sinister cheerfulness.

Gardner said nothing. It wasn't too late to set off the silent alarm, was it? He was still stuck in this office with her, on top of a skyscraper filled with security guards. Taking him down would require sacrifices, of course. She had already written the statements.

She didn't want to be the subject of those statements, though. She didn't want to be his first victim tonight, or his hostage and meat shield on the way out. His coat had folded away, revealing, yes, he was armed. Strange, because _of course _he would be, but seeing the gun just made it so much worse.

"What do you want?" she asked once more. She fidgeted a little in her seat, couldn't stop herself, in some attempt to gain distance between them without _seeming _to do so. Looking at him seemed demeaning, not looking at him even more so.

He put his head a little to the side, just enough for the light from her screen to crawl up his cheek and catch in startling green eyes. "You should keep pursuing your career at Blume. Politics can be such a minefield. All I have to do is leak some hints to DedSec and they'll do the rest."

"You should have spared yourself the trouble," Gardner said slowly. She wasn't sure she wanted it this way. She should lie, tell him whatever he thought he wanted to hear and wait until he was out the door, then set off the alarm and hide while it all went down.

For a moment, he did nothing, just sat there, contemplating her. Then he moved, so fast it nearly pulled a shriek from her throat. He dropped his phone into his pocket, got away from the desk, gripped the back of her chair and swirled her around, brief disorienting vertigo making her blink. He dropped both hands to the armrests, leaning in.

"I give you _one_ chance," he said and there it was, the threat he had been keeping hidden until now. Nothing _veiled _about it, nothing hidden, just the unspoken, razor implication of all the ways he could tear her life down. She sunk back in her chair as far as she could possibly go.

"You _really_ should take…"

All he screens in her office flared to life, the large one on the wall, her desktop computer and even her laptop showed nothing but glaring white. Through the black glass, she could see the screen of her secretary's computer doing the same. You didn't need to be a genius to know every _other _screen in the building was doing it.

Pearce was staring at her screen, the same as she did, surprise and anger making an odd combination of his expression. He hadn't moved away, but his focus was clearly no longer on her.

A black line pushed itself across the screen, splitting it in two, then it deflected to the sound of a heavily distorted voice.

_"Here's one from me to you, dear lovely drones of Blume!" _

There was a dramatic pause. Distracted as she was, Gardner still caught Pearce mutter, "Not her again," under his breath, so quietly it couldn't be meant for her.

_"This is SPARTAAAA!" _ Then the voice chuckled. _"Get clean, my precious! Yours truly, BlackMage!" _

Everything went dark, screens and light, but without the hard, familiar slap of a blackout as it kicked in. And the sprinklers went off, like a floodgate opening, drenching them completely in just one moment.

Pearce finally let go off her chair and stepped back. She could barely see him, now that the only light came from the cityscape outside, only the outline of him against it. She saw him pull out his phone again, saw it light his face and the sprinklers turned off again.

"Nevermind the interruption," Pearce said, but she thought she heard some strain in his controlled voice this time. "Take the chance I give you, I'm not generous."

As far as he was concerned, the conversation was done and he headed for the door, dismissed her entirely. She didn't know if the alarm even still worked, had no idea what _else _BlackMage had done to their system. Three hackers, then. Not just Kenney and Pearce with this level of access, this new guy had it, too.

It made her wonder _who else _was there, with their fingers firmly on the pulse. Any one of them could probably make it all fall to pieces at a hand-wave. Pearce wasn't doing it because he was riding too hard on ctOS' functionality. He might claim otherwise, but without it, he'd be _nothing. _Kenney, she had no inkling at all. He was in hiding, perhaps too embittered to realise what he could do.

No one knew what BlackMage even wanted, with his long string of bad and expensive pranks.

Wait. _Her. _Pearce had said _her. _He knew who this was and he didn't seem to be particularly thrilled.

"You know about BlackMage," Gardner accused and actually managed to stop him on his tracks. It wasn't enough to get him to turn back around.

"There's know and _know," _he pointed out roughly. "If I really _knew, _I'd deliver her with her fingers broken and a bullet through the head."

It took her a long moment to figure out where the rancour in his tone was coming from. When she did, she had to stifle a laugh. Was it possible he had been on the receiving end of BlackMage's jokes, too?

"But you know more than we do," she insisted. Her own intensity drove her out of her chair and around the desk, after him. The soaked carpet gave in under her feet. "We could work together on this. You could give us what you have and…"

"I don't work for you," he said with finality and stepped out through the door where he had come from. In the darkness, outside on the hallway, she heard the dull sound of a brief scuffle. A security guard, no doubt roused by what had just happened, was unlucky enough to get in his way.

After a few minutes, probably with Pearce safely off the floor, the sprinklers were turned back on.

* * *

><p><em>"How do you make a con work? Always be prepared to go the extra mile."<em>

* * *

><p><em>End of _Black Magic<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>_Seriously_ incomplete list of Aiden's crimes there, but he was on a schedule.

Black Mage/Magic is a reference to Richard K. Morgan's The Dark Defiles, because I can and because I've never loved anything as much as this book (and the whole damn trilogy.)

Nice updating I've got going. Gotta make hay while the sun shines and all. Pretty soon all my motivation will have ran out. That's why I'm fighting tooth and nail against starting a longer story. I seem to have only enough stamina for one-shots.

It was interesting to see how the tone of this story changed when I switched from using first names to surnames. It became noticably harsher.


	4. Nothing Left to Prove

_[this takes place as soon or as long after the main events as you like]_

**_Nothing Left to Prove**

* * *

><p>It was always going to end like this. Something like this. It was going to be a bullet to the head, a blade to the throat, a car wreck deformed beyond recognition severing the torso, or brain splattered on the ground through the cracks in the motorcycle helmet.<p>

It was going to be red-blue-white flickering lights from police and fire department and emergency vehicles, helicopter search lights painting large swathes of brightness across the road while the city is sheathed in darkness and chaos.

It was going to be the end of the run, the last searing flashes of flames as they died to the crackling laughter of electricity as it bounced between broken connections, leaving countless surveillance cameras to hang their heads as if in mourning, their all-seeing eyes momentarily blinded to the scene just below them. Fitting, in a way, for there would be no recording of this, no digital footprint to follow, no pixels to analyse in the years to come. No proof, either, for the hunters that they had brought down their quarry in the end. Just a body, mangled, broken in more ways than is imaginable, or comfortable to think about. Charred and so utterly, so hopelessly destroyed, nothing more than flesh, dead meat for the modern day scavengers.

It was always going to end. Like this. Or in some other way, equally brutal, equally inevitable. You live by the sword, you die by it, they say. And, because time does not stop, or stand still, or reverse even for the most gifted of storytellers, if you live by the gun you will find the same fate. Still, you might ask, what if you lived by your wits? By your experience, by years upon harsh, merciless years of battle upon battle. What if your finger on the trigger was just an afterthought and the first strike — and the second — came from an entirely different direction?

What of those? Still broken, in the end? Bleeding out into the dirtied, grey and black of the unyielding concrete of the street they once owned?

But you remember, don't you? There are no camera eyes. They are blind and being blind, the future will remember this moment through witnesses alone, through _people,_ fallible and easily confounded, easily scared and played for fools. If they weren't, perhaps none of this would have happened, no one would be here — there — on that city street at night in the blackout. And what they see, these eyewitnesses at the end of it all? What do they know of the lifeless carcass of the legend at their feet?

Not as much as they think, perhaps. And less, always _less, _than they should. It is the nature of humans, their only true tragedy.

The scene has only one way it can go, though, regardless of what preceded, the true nature of the chase and the fight before the fall, before the blackout and all the blood and scattered limbs and soft, torn tissue everywhere. The cops will come, still armed, still wary at the end of it, guns raised as if there was still a threat, still a last trick for the Fox to pull even in death. And when nothing comes and the stillness lasts long enough to finally believe it might be the real thing, the medics will come instead and put the mangled body in a bag and carry it away, put it in the freezer like something out of a supermarket, carelessly bought and discarded.

Pathologists will get to work, eventually, sample upon sample taken from what used to be a man — or something else, something more or _worse_ for you, depending on what role you had in this game. You can see them, can't you? In your mind's eye? In their labs, staring into their screens as they watch the results come in. They'd have to reconstruct the face, just to get Profiler to comply and spew out what is left, after so many years, of reliable records. Blood and DNA and fingerprints, carefully saved and preserved for this very moment, down the line, in the hope it would ever come.

(Even if hope is really a sad thing.)

You shouldn't be surprised at how well the matching goes. No, really, you shouldn't. This entire thing would have been a pointless waste if the body couldn't have been identified, despite the damage it has suffered. We live in the future of the world, at least, we like to think so. Like all before us, we think we are at the pinnacle. Surely, a _little_ fire after a _little_ car crash and a _few_ bullets cannot make it impossible for all our science and all our skills to put a name on the tag and engrave it on a tombstone (though, there won't be a tombstone, those in power know well enough what would happen if there were.)

The thing is, really, all those 0s and 1s, they are fickle things. They look like something reliable, truths set in stone, unshakable. But really, haven't you been paying attention? Everything I said before, until now, everything you know about this man shot and burned and stabbed and shredded out in the street. If there is nothing else in the world (and there is) that does his bidding, it's exactly those 0s and 1s. Dancing to his tune, really. It's a nice sight, I can only recommend it.

This is not how it _ends_, you didn't think that, did you? You shouldn't believe everything they tell you. _They_ shouldn't believe everything they think they know.

Look at what they have, why don't you. They have a body, chased down, turned into burned, minced meat on a dark city street. Who has time, in moments like this, to pay attention? The phone wasn't broken until the very end, before the blackout hit and when it happened, ctOS wasn't there. Eyewitnesses, I said it before, and they are as they are, they think they know, but they can barely tell fact from fiction in their normal lives, much less so under stress.

No, you probably can't trust them. Even if they think they are telling the truth and others, well, they may have reasons to lie, too. You can never really know for sure. It seems very inviting to trust the data, if that's the alternative. But really, do you want to trust the data when it resides on computers networked to ctOS? You do know who I am, do you?

That's how I make my living. Ah yes, still do. That body? Not really me, no. You should've seen it coming. I hope you did.

It holds true, though. This is how it'll end in the long run. At one point or another, the hunt will end and blood will spill and the concrete won't care what it soaks up. And they'll bag me up in plastics and bury me in an unmarked grave where no one will ever find me.

Everything, _always_, ends like that.

* * *

><p><em>Audio Log #[error: incorrect integer value]: Aiden Pearce [erased, unrecoverable]<em>

* * *

><p><em>End of _Nothing Left to Prove<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> I'm really beginning to like this style of writing. Sorry it's so short, though. Short and sweet, hopefully. It's sort of the follow-up I wanted to write for Quaint Old World, but then again, it isn't at all. I don't know where it came from. I wanted to kill the guy. I wanted to make him survive. Having to pay no attention to continuity gives you amazing freedom.


	5. A Fatal Thing

_[this takes place before the events of the game]_

**_A Fatal Thing**

**"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess." ― Oscar Wilde**

* * *

><p>Damien transferred the cigarette to the other corner of his mouth, settled his hand on Aiden's arm and shifted him around for a better angle under the heat of the lamp. He held fast before he applied the tweezers, digging through shredded flesh for yet another tiny shard of glass.<p>

Aiden hissed through clenched teeth, but barely flinched. His forearms and palms were lacerated, blood caked everywhere and everytime Damien wiped it away to see what the hell he was even doing, fresh blood welled up. Nothing deep enough to warrant stitches, though, which was good news. Damien would have had to pack his partner into the car and find some doctor he could bribe or blackmail. More effort by far than he was in the mood for tonight.

A few splinters had managed to cut up Aiden's face, too, but the damage there was minor. Band-aids dotted his face over the worse cuts, scab and air over the others.

"One day, you are gonna get yourself killed, kid," Damien said, wiped the fresh blood away and went to the next fissure. "You're gonna burn to cinders."

"Are _you _advising caution?" Aiden asked, adrenaline-fuelled levity riding hard on another pained hiss. "You wanted the drive. It's not my fault they put it in the safe. In fact, if your information hadn't been a week out of da… _fuck!_…out of date…"

"I told you it was old news," Damien pointed out, the pincers digging cruelly deep. "I told you it could be somewhere hard to access. I told you to be careful."

"I was careful."

"You got thrown through a second story window," Damien bit down on the cigarette so he could give a quick grin. "I'd hate to see careless."

"You applaud careless, every time it's happened. Besides, the window wasn't a fuck up, it was the escape plan…"

Damien wiped more blood away, leaned back momentarily to take a last drag from his cigarette and studied his protégé. Aiden looked pale in the white glare of the lamp, tired and just a little high after the chase. A small drop of blood had dried on his cheek in a perfect tear shape. Aiden used the pause to rub it away and managed to reopen some minor cuts in the process and smearing the blood along his jaw.

"I knew you were crazy when I found you," Damien remarked. He was probably doing a bad job at discouraging this type of behaviour, true enough and the USB drive Aiden had retrieved was worth quite a bit.

"You've got it backward, _I_ found _you_," Aiden said. "Shit, get that glass out of me."

"Yeah, well, you're still crazy."

Damien studded out the cigarette and went back to painstakingly remove every sharp-edged, blood-drenched piece of broken glass. It was messy, blood kept getting in the way, ran down everywhere. Kid could count himself lucky nothing important had been damaged. He needed his hands for the keyboard and he sure as hell needed them to fight, neither of which would be a lot of fun with a bunch of severed sinews.

"And stop rubbing at the face," Damien added. "You'll just make it worse and where _would _you be without that pretty face?"

"Didn't know you cared."

"Yeah, I'm the one who has to look at it all the time, especially when you type, you should see yourself," Damien nodded, finally finished with the first arm. It had taken the worst of it, apparently. He slapped a liberal amount of disinfectant on it before he bandaged the arm tightly. "Always wondered, actually, were you popular in prison?"

Currently distracted by the slow relief of pain from one arm, Aiden didn't shoot back immediately, only arched a inquisitive eyebrow at him and retracted the arm to cradle it against his chest.

"More than you," Aiden said finally. Probably true, all things considered. Damien had never actually learned the story of how Aiden, with all his ruthless street smarts had managed to land himself in jail in the first place. Men like that, they tended to find some bolt-hole in time, some sacrificial lamb to take the fall in their stead. Must have been some really embarrassing mess, like the one that had put Damien himself in much the same situation. Someone, somewhere, really should be congratulated for bringing them together at all. Match made in heaven or some other biblical place, at least. Probably quite a bit warmer, though.

As far as Damien could tell, Aiden's prison time had been mostly uneventful. He'd collected a group of hangers-on, guys with a nose for who the bigger shark was in any given cell tract. No one dumb enough to pull anything in the showers, certainly. Or if someone _had,_ nobody had yet found the pieces.

Damien, meanwhile, had been making nice and helping out with the prison library and it's geriatric computer. Which is where he'd met Aiden, a man with all the appearances of a knuckle-dragging thug and the brains of a goddamned fucking prodigy. In retrospect it was a little hard to say who had latched onto whom first.

"I need a drink," Aiden said.

"When I'm done," Damien said. He'd moved his chair around and pinned the other arm under the light. "Consider it an educational measure from your elder."

"I can just get up and take it."

"Yeah, and then I'll let you play nurse on yourself."

"What, and deprive yourself of the pleasure?"

"You wish. Dismantling a difficult security system and earning a shitload of money without having to put on pants _that_'s what gives me pleasure; I love a good drink and _sometimes _it's fun watching you fumble with a bit of tricky code. This," he poked the tweezers into a bit of undamaged skin to a rather startled snarl from his partner, "really isn't up there."

"And you love telling me off," Aiden huffed. "Educational measure my ass."

"_Someone_ has to."

"_Someone _needs to keep going. How much longer is this gonna take?"

"Good work needs patience, my boy," he said with a ridiculously stern look.

"I'm in pain and I want a drink, patience really doesn't have anything to do with it."

During the procedure, Aiden had gone from keeping stoically silent to snarling and hissing like an angry animal. It wasn't exactly a reassuring change, all things considered. Bit of a temper, that one, and quick to violence, especially after someone got the jump on him and the pain couldn't be helping.

Damien had caught a hook to the chin, once, though it had been more of an accident in the middle of a bigger scuffle against a bunch of Fixers. Once was bad enough, though. He prodded a little harder with the tweezers, felt Aiden's arm twitch and strain in the effort to keep still.

"And whose fault is it you're in this state?"

"Yours."

Damien sighed. "_And_ we are back where we started from."

"Yeah," Aiden leaned his head back and stared at Damien along the length of his nose. "Progress."

Damien focused on picking more glass shards from Aiden's arm, each bloodied fragment with a million edges perfectly suited to bury deeper into defenceless flesh. They'd been low on painkillers to start with and it couldn't do more than blunt the pain slightly. Definitely needed to stock up on medical supplies, just in case Aiden couldn't resist throwing himself into the thick of it again. He was right, though, Damien wasn't above applauding when he did. Where'd be the point of living on the edge if you didn't enjoy doing it?

Aiden positively deflated by the time Damien was through with picking his arm clean and wrapped it up. He sunk lower in his chair, momentarily boneless. Some of the mad glint in his eyes had dulled. He flexed his fingers carefully. He wasn't going to be all grace and elegance in front of a keyboard for a while.

"I'll sit you on a sheet of plastic next time," Damien said as he gave the floor a cursory mop with a handful of paper towels. "Look at that mess."

"Let's not," Aiden groaned tiredly. He pulled himself to his feet and walked through the dark room, heavy steps on the old wood, until he stopped by the liquor cabinet.

"I shouldn't let you near any more glass," Damien said and stuffed the blood-soaked towels into a bag, shoved it into a corner. He'd burn it later rather than risk tossing it in the trash. Some animal would doubtlessly dig it up and scatter it all over the backyard. They ran their operations out of a bad neighbourhood for a reason, but it wasn't any excuse to be sloppy.

"Try to stop me."

Aiden had all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop, clattering around, pulling out bottles and holding them angled toward the light to check their labels. An appreciative whistle escaped him when he, apparently, found what he'd been looking for.

Damien, still hung up on the bloody mess in the kitchen, only started paying attention when he heard Aiden uncork a bottle, closely followed by the light tinkling of liquid being poured.

"That better not be my good scotch!" Damien warned, already halfway across the room. "I'm saving…"

He nearly walked right into Aiden's outstretched arm and the glass it held out toward him. He could smell the scotch, definitely the good one, damn. The damage already done, he took the offered glass.

"Alright," Damien said. "Just for you."

"Don't be full of yourself. I know how you got that bottle."

Damien narrowed his eyes, but realised he didn't mind all that much. "It's worth a toast, at least."

"Here's to excess," Aiden offered solemnly but the grin was obvious even in the dark, lingering in his tone. "For it leads to success."

"I've always liked the way you think, Aiden."

They clinked their glasses and drank in silence. Aiden had been very generous when he'd poured, like any other uncultured punk. Damien let it slide, though, after taking a first, slow sip, savouring the taste as the scotch burned its way down his throat and left a pleasant, addictive tingle on his tongue.

"Ah, that's good stuff, worth every penny I didn't spent on it," Damien declared and took another, much greedier sip.

Damien watched as Aiden downed the scotch, then refilled both their glasses, standing in silence for once, together in the dark.

"You can crash on the couch, if you want," Damien said. "Can't let you loose on the street in this state. You'll hurt yourself and I'll have to train myself a new minion."

"I suggest something small," Aiden said, hugged the scotch close and wandered off towards the living room. "So you can actually handle it."

Chuckling, Damien turned off the glaring white light under which he'd bandaged his partner before he followed him.

Aiden was sprawling on the couch, shoes kicked off into some dark corner. An old floor lamp stood in a corner, shedding glum orange light as the only source of illumination.

"I can handle you just fine," Damien said and let himself fall into an armchair off to the side of the couch. "Give me the bottle, will you?"

"Maybe a guinea pig."

Aiden held out the bottle, a little awkwardly in his bandaged hands and giving Damien a quick, horrible vision of the bottle shattering on the floor and spilling its precious contents on his threadbare carpet. It'd be much worse than a little blood in the kitchen and Aiden would never hear the end of it, either. But the transfer went smoothly.

"Yeah, I could do with a little more snuggling."

"I see, 'crash on the couch' is it. Bottle."

Damien filled his glass before handing it back. "Now you're just overestimating yourself."

"Sorry, I forgot that's your territory."

"Don't let it happen again."

They killed the too expensive scotch together, trading the bottle back and forth, spiced with clever words even as the alcohol slowly did its work and the responses slowed while the night dragged on.

"I've got a confession to make," Damien said with a snigger barely hidden in his tone.

"You're a black hat hacker," Aiden deadpanned. "I'm shocked." He'd thrown one leg over the back of the couch and was staring at the ceiling as if the pattern of brown water spots was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen.

"That too," Damien agreed with self-satisfaction. "But I've been reading your diary."

"I encrypted it. And it's not a _diary. _It's a _log._"

"Yes, very badly encrypted," Damien snorted. "I'm your teacher and sometimes you really make me despair."

Aiden was silent for a long moment. He manoeuvred the glass of scotch about until he could take a sip without spilling it all over himself. "Wait, the one where I talk about my favourite stuffed toy animal? You didn't believe that one, did you?"

"What stuffed toy?" Damien tried, but he could already tell he'd botched that one. Took him an entire second to say it. "It was the other one, where you say, you know…?"

Aiden laughed. "Yes? Come on, impress me with your awesome cold reading skills. I'm your teacher and sometimes you really make me despair."

Damien had his mouth already open in a retort, but it apparently took too long. Damn, should have known the man wasn't keeping a diary about childhood toys… must be the scotch. Aiden twisted his head far enough so he could look at him. He was grinning. "Got you, didn't I? Stop going through my stuff. The real thing's booby trapped, anyway."

"I love myself a challenge."

Aiden settled back down with a sigh. "You'll hate this one, trust me. And I'd have to put a bullet through you."

Damien arched his brows, an entirely private expression when there was no one paying attention. He said, "Your laundry's that dirty? God, I choose right."

"Wrong way around again."

Dimly, Damien remembered he should check the USB drive, just to make sure it hadn't been damaged, or if it was the right drive in the first place. It'd be ridiculous to have gone to such length only to come away empty-handed.

Aiden shifted again, then groaned when some inadvertent movement reminded him of his lacerated arms. "I'm going to stay put for a while," he said. "You'll have to beat up your own guys."

"Got a little pet project for you, anyway," Damien said. "I've been thinking about ways to expand the Profiler. It's a chip in the security armour, personal details and all. Personal _bank account _information."

"I think I like where this is going."

"Needs to be set up properly, though," Damien mused. "Bank security can be a bitch and I don't want to tip them off to any weakness. I'm putting all my faith in you." He paused for effect. "Impress me, come on."

"I'm not there for your entertainment."

"But you are, kid. Didn't you know?"

Aiden said nothing and Damien added, "You do a good job, too."

"Are you complimenting me? You're losing your touch."

"Scotch talking."

"Just don't try to hug me, I'd have to hurt you."

Damien was silent, lost in the oddly warm, nostalgic lethargy of the alcohol slowly doing its work on his thoughts.

"I really meant what I said, though," Damien asserted, earnest now. He took his feet from the table where he'd rested them this past hour. He lifted the scotch to the light, judging its meagre remains.

"Which part?" Aiden asked. He seemed half-asleep by now, crashing from combat-comedown and fading painkillers and too much good booze. He watched Damien from slack-lidded eyes, then reached out and put his glass on the table beside Damien's.

Damien took a deep breath before he answered. He carefully measured the last drops of scotch out between them. Barely a mouthful for each, barely more than a gesture.

"One day, you'll burn," Damien said. He didn't much care for how sagely that sounded, how old-hermit-in-a-cave. They made a good team, best he'd ever been part in. Aiden was vicious and viciously _smart_. Still a bit rough around the edges, of course, but damn quick on the uptake. From one moment to the next, Damien could get places he'd have to circumvent, cheat and trick before, and some doors had had to remain closed even so. Sending Aiden in was like deploying a guided missile, then sitting back and watching the mayhem. There was only so long it could last, though.

"Don't worry," Aiden assured him with a slow smirk. He pulled himself up on one elbow and reached for the glass again, holding it in midair between them. "I'll take you down with me."

Damien picked up his own glass, held it against the light to watch it shimmer, like dirty gold and fire.

"How about a last toast?" he asked.

* * *

><p>Here's to me, and here's to you,<p>

And here's to love and laughter-

I'll be true as long as you,

And not one moment after.

* * *

><p><em>End of _A Fatal Thing<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>I'm assuming that neither Aiden's nor Damien's personality was quite as abrasive before Lena's death or before being crippled, respectively.

While I really love a lot of the writing in this game, the relationship between Aiden and Damien could have been handled better. We are told in one voice-over that they fell out after working together for a long time. That's not enough, especially when so much of the game's plot actually hinges on their personal issues with each other. They must have got along very well at some point and you don't really see any of it, nor how it changed after the Merlaut job. So, yeah, it fascinates me. There's also Damien behaving like a jilted ex throughout the game, which I thought was an interesting approach.

I googled "Irish toasts" for that last bit. No idea how Irish it is and while it's extremely cheesy, it also fits very well.

There is NO TAG FOR DAMIEN! Wtf?!

Anyway, I update an awful lot, don't I? One could almost be led to believe I'm procrastinating about something out there in the real world...


	6. All Good Things

[this takes place immediately after the Merlaut job]

**_All Good Things**

* * *

><p><em>"An incident at Mad Mile's prestigious Merlaut Hotel has put the police on alert. Details are still sparse, but it appears that a yet unidentified man, when approached by hotel security, attacked and subsequently fled the scene. Security personnel has been injured, one man is being taken to hospital. Police are alerted as circumstances remain vague. Road blocks are in place and police are still searching the premises and surrounding area. An official statement by the police is expected within the hour…"<em>

Damien tossed the remote at the television. It bounced off the screen and skidded over the floor, landing in an empty pizza carton. The news droned on as Damien got up and marched across the darkened room back to his desk.

_"Speculations are running high. Was this a foiled terrorist attack?"_

People were too quick to hysterics, really and for all the wrong reasons. Damien glanced up again. The news had pulled some so-called 'experts' from their asses. Shit, just how big was this getting anyway?

There weren't going to be answers on the news, Damien knew that much. He leaned forward on both hands, watched the logs on the screen, clinically mapping out the exact shape of today's disaster. Without taking his eyes away, Damien fished his chair close and sat down, still staring at it. He had a feeling he'd be in this very place for many nights to come.

_"… could it be this was the beginning of a spree killing rather than a terror attack?"_

Somebody else in the system. Somebody _else _tripping the alarm. He knew it hadn't been him, after all, he'd just been caught in the same web. He'd been cut short, but he'd probably had enough to track him to his source, find the little shit and turn his life to hell for ruining his run tonight.

The Merlaut had been a stroke of genius, best idea Aiden had had in weeks. _Rich _hunting grounds if ever there were any. Ripe for the picking and an outdated security system. If this other hacker hadn't been a fucking amateur. If _Aiden _of all people, hadn't suddenly run scared…

The flickering light from the television changed and drew his attention back. The host abruptly interrupted her 'expert' and went on to comment on live footage from a police helicopter. It was trailing a car through the traffic of downtown Chicago. A white or silver Sonarus, by the shape of it, easy to track against the rain-darkened road. Police must have seriously underestimated the size of their perimeter, because Aiden was already well beyond it and going at breakneck speed through evening traffic, police cruisers visibly struggling to keep up.

As Damien watched, the Sonarus broke abruptly, pivoted in a nearly perfect 90 degree angle and vanished into an alley, where the helicopter lost sight of it, blocked by tall buildings.

Damien's phone rang. He ignored it for a long while, didn't even need to look at it to know who was calling. _Now _Aiden remembered he was supposed to have nerves of steel, _now, _when it didn't matter anymore.

The helicopter gained height, circled the block of houses and still nearly missed the Sonarus break through into a main-street again. Police Cruisers had managed to gain on him, advancing from one side. The Sonarus backed up, turned and sped down the other way, drifted around a corner and wiped across the sidewalk. The helicopter lost sight of it again.

The phone kept ringing. Damien sneered at it before he swept it up and finally answered.

"My boy, you are on TV," he announced with acid cheerfulness.

"I'm coming to pick you up," Aiden said and if anything, he seemed calmer than ever. The engine roared in the background, screeching of car tyres and metal as he forced his way through. Sirens were audible only distantly as he gained on his pursuers.

"You've got half of CPD trailing you," Damien pointed out dryly. "And I don't think have enough lemonade for all your friends."

There was a pause, something crashed on the other end of the phone and Damien turned back to the TV in time to see Aiden bring his car around a sharp turn. A compact car failed to stop in time and caught the Sonarus' tail, shoved the bigger car over the sidewalk and almost into an elevated train pillar. Instead, Aiden managed to yank his car around just in time, the vehicle tore open lengthwise on the pillar, Damien heard the howl of the metal through the phone.

"I'll shake them," Aiden said. He needed a moment to free his car from the pillar, had to ram his way past a police cruiser and the helicopter lost him again as he followed underneath the train tracks.

"You have twenty minutes to pack," Aiden continued. "Too many people got a good look at me in the Merlaut. They can find me, they'll find you."

"You can never make it in twenty minutes," Damien observed. "They've almost got you, my boy."

"Damien!" Aiden snapped. "Everything's gone to shit. I don't know what happened, I'm not going to take chances. And I won't let _you. _Be ready."

Aiden cut the connection before Damien had a chance to argue. Stupid boy, really, thought he had any say in it…

Damien stood in the living room, while the TV kept at it — back to the 'expert', now that the police was casting about in the dark — and the countless lines of logs spread out across all his computer screens. Despite himself, Damien listened for telltale signs outside, for sirens, abruptly muted as too many cars made a turn into the lane, coming from all sides. He heard nothing of the sort, though.

But much as he hated to admit it, Aiden had a point. There were only two ways left for this to go. The cops would catch Aiden, and while Aiden wouldn't talk, he wouldn't have to. The cops would unravel his life and inevitably, it would lead them back to Damien. If the cops _didn't _catch him, in the days to follow, everything about tonight would be analysed and traced until the pieces all came together. Damien had left too many traces in the Merlaut's system.

Sooner or later, someone would show up on his doorstep. There'd better not be anything interesting left for them to find.

_"Coming up only on WKZ: Exclusive footage from the Merlaut. Stay tuned." _

Damien sat back down at the desk, quickly going through his data, sifting through terabytes of valuable information in mere minutes. It was his life's work, even if the sentimentality of it nearly made him gag. It _was, _though. Pieces of knowledge, account and credit card information, company secrets, dirty secrets, profiles of potential marks… all on his fingertips to take and use and sell to the highest bidder.

He transferred the most important things to two laptops, both sitting idly by his side, tiny and feeble in front of the servers. He wouldn't be able to take everything, not like this.

_"These are recordings from security cameras in the Merlaut's lobby. We would like to thank the Merlaut management for allowing us it broadcast these. The faces of guests and staff, have of course been blurred out." _

Damien turned back to watch the television again, listening with one ear to the chattering of his hard drives as they worked to preserve his precious data.

The Merlaut's security cam footage was a little jumpy, black and white, cameras moving around the lobby at utterly predictable intervals. Damien knew they had barely caught Aiden, not while he was still in control of the situation. The angle of his cap shadowed his face from above and he was too average to identify him by his stature and build alone.

Damien watched and felt his mood darken with every passing minute, seeing what there was, how _perfectly _everything had been going. And there it was, the exact moment everything changed. Aiden swerved to the side, still in his casual stroll, an already failing attempt to avoid attention. Even Damien could see the agitation of the security guards scattered around the lobby, could see them as they left their places to close in.

Aiden dropped the phone into the pocket of his jacket — the moment Damien had been disconnected and it made him curse and seethe just watching it. He could tell Aiden wasn't going to make it to the doors, not by the way the doormen had already shifted to block his path. Aiden took a running start anyway, collided with one of the two doormen at full speed, took him down. The camera footage stuttered, took away some of the speed and precision of the move, left only the sheer brutality of it. Damien thought he might hear the man's jaw break as it collided with Aiden's elbow.

The other doormen lunged for him and got a hold of his arm, tried to trip him and failed. Aiden used the moment, reached past the doorman and pulled the man's gun. The guard tried to block him, but Aiden slipped his free hand around the man's chest and up over his throat. With the guard firmly between himself and the other security, Aiden edged backwards through the door and shoved the doormen away as he turned and bolted.

_"The man has not yet been identified, but the police are positive they will soon attach a name to the attacker." _

A change in rhythm in the chattering of his hard drives brought Damien back. All done. All he could take, anyway and no sign of Aiden yet. He was fairly sure the news would report an arrest immediately, so Aiden hadn't been caught yet…

Lights washed through the room as a car pulled up the driveway. Damien took a deep breath.

He had a failsafe installed on his system. One click and the thing would wipe everything beyond any hope of recovery. Maybe, with enough time and skill, some police technician could reconstruct a few bytes of data, not enough to trace him and certainly not enough evidence to convict, should it ever come to that.

The dialog box was open, mirrored on all screens, looking innocent enough. Just one click, and it'd be done. _Are you sure?_

Instead, Damien got up and walked the front door, leaned in the doorway. The car parked in the driveway was a small red Bogen 200 in pristine condition, except for it's smashed in window on the driver's side.

"You're late," Damien remarked. "You're really losing your touch, Aiden."

Aiden ignored him. He circled the car and opened the trunk, pulled out two canisters and walked toward the house.

Damien frowned. "What's this?"

Aiden gave him a hard look, piercing gaze even in the darkness. "There are six years worth of trace evidence in that house," he said. "I'm not going to jail for this and it's the easiest way to get rid of it all."

He pushed past Damien and put the canisters down. "Get the others," he told Damien and switched on the light in the hallway, pulled a travel bag from the wardrobe and went quickly through the other things stored there.

Damien had only turned around, leaned his other shoulder in the doorway. "When are you gonna apologise?" he asked.

Aiden glanced up briefly and said nothing, slung the bag over his shoulder and made his way to the living room. Damien heard him rummage around, packing what he thought he needed, while Damien didn't move an inch. The longer he stood there, the stronger the smell of gasoline from the canisters became.

Damien waited. He wanted a cigarette. Giving up had been the worst choice he'd ever made. He couldn't recall, now, why he had done it. A moment of fearing his own mortality, perhaps. As if it mattered, really, as if it made any difference when he had always known he wouldn't die peacefully of old age.

Aiden returned to the hallway, dropped the now full bag and stood facing Damien. He'd taken off the cap, stuffed it into his pocket, leaving his face without treacherous shadows for once. He seemed mildly puzzled.

"Why are you just standing there?"

"What the fuck happened today?" Damien asked. "What were you thinking?"

"What was _I _thinking?" Aiden asked back, baring his teeth a little into the beginnings of a sneer. "_You_ tripped their security. It was all going south after that."

"And now you want to blow up my house," Damien concluded. "I made no mistake. It's you who disconnected me too soon."

It seemed to be Aiden's day to not giving Damien what he wanted. Right now, he wanted an _admission, _or at least a discussion. In many ways, it'd be better if they would be shouting at each other.

Aiden pushed past Damien without another word, returned to the car, put the bag in the trunk and brought two more canisters into the hallway. He put one down, but unscrewed the other. The stink increased almost immediately.

"Last chance, Damien," Aiden said, his voice hard. The point was clearly not negotiable. They could push blame back and forth for hours, until the police finally tracked them, but it wouldn't change a thing. The damage was done, neither of them could go back and replay the past.

Damien felt a scowl tighten his face. He pushed himself away from the door. "Give me five minutes," he said darkly.

In a way, this had always been setup to go up in flames. It was their headquarters, their base of operations and it had always been meant to be abandoned if the bloodhounds got too close. The most valuable thing in it were the computers, but he had already taken care of that. What remained, other than that, barely took the five minutes he had demanded. A handful of fake ID's, a set of phones and the laptops he had stuffed with data before. Aiden had apparently already taken all the weaponry.

By the time Damien was done, the house already reeked of gasoline, soaking through the worn carpet and into the old furniture.

The dialog box still filled all screens, still patiently waiting for the end. When Damien returned to the living room, he found Aiden looking at it pensively.

"Now what…?" Damien asked. Aiden gave him a brief look, then reached out and hit enter, just like that, no ceremony, no _reference. _It meant nothing, maybe it never had and now it was gone. The progress bar filled up as it erased the data, took barely ten seconds to do it.

"Well that was anticlimactic," Damien remarked. "You should get that checked before you disappoint in a more intimate situation."

The screens turned black and a bright white line wrote itself across all of them: _No OS found on hard drive… _the curser blinked patiently. The whole rig would blow up soon enough.

Aiden picked up the laptops, shoved them into Damien's hands as he walked past. "Let's go," he said.

Aiden parked the little red car across the road, then went back inside to set the fire. Damien hung back by the car, watching the odd peacefulness of the scene, the way the street was empty of anyone else.

The first spark of flame became visible through the windows and it spread incredibly quickly, crawling from curtain to curtain. If it were a scene from a film, it would have been quite a bit prettier, less black smoke and more bright flames. It changed quickly, though, as the fire started to eat through the wooden walls. Aiden emerged through the door, framed by the fire and walking with a certain leisurely stride, as if it was nothing.

Well, Damien thought sourly, no use for that composure now, is it? If he hadn't shot it to hell earlier, this certainly wouldn't have become necessary.

Aiden settled his back on the hood, side by side with Damien.

The house burned quietly for a little while and than an earsplitting explosion took the roof right off, rained glowing shards down on them but neither man seemed to notice. Aiden flicked a burning piece of debris from his shoulder.

The sudden surge of oxygen made the flames lick high into the night-sky. Aiden must have opened the gas valves. There was some minor chance this thing would be considered an accident, but there was no way to make sure of it.

Lights went on in neighbouring houses. It would only be a moment before the first neighbours crowded out into the street. No doubt someone was already calling the firefighters, the cops, too, maybe.

"What now?" Damien asked. "Any other great ideas?"

Aiden didn't answer immediately, seemed mesmerised by the fire in front of them. He'd always liked his destruction, but this time, he had no right to stand there and admire it. This, right there in front of them, was a blazing sign of defeat, the culmination of an increasing list of mishaps.

"I'll drop you off at a motel," Aiden said. He got up and walked around the car. "Get in."

The first onlookers slowly congealed on the burning house, clustering together in small groups, pointing with their fingers, talking among themselves. Somewhere in the distance, a siren made itself heard.

Damien took his time, kept watching the fire and thought of everything he hadn't been able to save. He had what he needed, though, he could track this other hacker and make sure he got what was coming for him. He'd need to do a bit of prodding to get Aiden to do the really nasty things, but in the end, they'd both enjoy it.

When he thought he'd waited long enough to make his point, Damien pushed himself away from the hood and got into the car. They passed by the fire-engine, just as it turned into the street. Another, smaller explosion stalked them. Damien fiddled with the side mirror so he could catch the last licks of the flames before it was taken out of sight. A dull red glow hung on the sky above.

The silence in the car was almost absolute, punctuated only by the thin hum of the engine and the rushing wind through the broken window. Streetlights strove through the car, harsh white and sometimes the hellish glare of a traffic light as they waited and the silence became worse for a moment, until the green released them.

Chicago was quiet now, an odd counterpoint to earlier, there were no chases here, no police to outrun. Not yet, and if Aiden had at least got one thing right tonight, then there wouldn't be enough left of the house to ever catch up to them.

"You still haven't apologised," Damien pointed out.

Aiden was silent, gaze fixed on the road as if driving suddenly constituted a challenge for him. Damien was almost certain he wouldn't say anything at all and was that _ever_ aggravating.

Finally, Aiden said, "You really don't get it, do you?"

"Get what, exactly, my boy?" Damien asked back. "Because what I get is this: You freaked out. I've never seen you do that before, but I guess there's a first time for everything. You didn't keep it together and I had no time to wipe us from the Merlaut's system. You screwed up and because you screwed up, everyone's onto us now." He paused for effect. "You need to apologise. And _maybe_ I'll forgive you."

"You should have backed out when I told you to," Aiden said. "There would've been plenty of time to wipe everything if you hadn't gone after the other hacker."

"There was plenty of time," Damien agreed. "Until you disconnected me."

"I had to disconnect you," Aiden insisted. "I had to get out of there."

He shook his head, put the gas pedal down to make a traffic light before it turned red. "You see, that's the part you've never understood. It's _my _head on the line when we do things like that. I'm in the middle of it. And because that's the case, I get to call the shots."

Damien forced a little snigger past his throat. He didn't much feel like laughing, but Aiden was completely ridiculous. "This partnership," Damien said. "Is a meritocracy. And since I'm obviously contributing more value, I'm also the one in charge."

It was a harsh assessment, he usually tried to spare Aiden's pride, but while his partner had a surprisingly capable mind, every so often, the street thug in him had trouble taking a hint.

Aiden was silent for another moment, when he spoke again the words came low and clipped, with that growl he got in his voice when he was angry. "We're done."

He didn't make the next traffic lights and stopped a little too abruptly, jolting Damien who hadn't put on a seat belt. He reached out with one hand to steady himself. He'd always hated riding shotgun, even if Aiden was undisputedly the better driver.

"Well obviously," Damien said. "You've just burned it all down. It'll be some time until we're set up again."

"No," Aiden rumbled. "We are _done, _Damien."

Damien laughed. "You can't be serious!"

"You think today was the first time working with you nearly cost me my skin?" Aiden snapped, raising his voice for the first time. The airflow from the open window stole only some of his sudden ferocity. "You keep losing it, Damien. I can't rely on you. And if I can't trust you to have my back, I don't need you."

"Aren't you hil_ar_ious today!" Damien snorted. "Don't blame your mistakes on me. I had your back, I had it covered. Do you think I _couldn't _have called those security back? You just had to sit still, pretend you are a clueless bystander until I got control of their system. It'd have been nothing but a false alarm. _That'_s what happened. Don't give me that grand speech about 'having your back'. I had yours, kid. It's you who failed me."

Aiden shifted his grip on the wheel, resting one hand casually on top, while keeping his right hand on the gear-shift. "Think what you want," he said. "There's no partnership anymore. We split the money and we part ways. That's all there is."

Damien crossed his arms over his chest and looked out the window, watched the lights go by and let his mind go empty for a little. Eventually he said, "Parker Seven."

Aiden gave no answer, but took the next left turn, putting them on route to the motel. The Parker Seven was a good place, fairly central on Parker Square, but rundown enough to have reliable vacancies and no one asking awkward questions. They could lie low for now… Well, _he _could lie low. Aiden seemed to have decided he'd hole up somewhere else until his sanity kicked back in. It was better to leave him his space if he got into one of his moods.

They stopped outside the Parker Seven and the silence fell like a choking veil when Aiden killed the engine.

"I take it you won't be staying," Damien said conversationally. He shook into motion somewhat slower than technically necessary. Aiden was looking straight ahead, hand still resting on the steering wheel. His posture was tense above a flimsy attempt at annoyed patience.

"So that's it?" Damien asked. "You think you're done with me. You think I've… what? Served my use?" He pulled an ugly grin. "There's nothing left for me to teach?"

"It's not worth it," Aiden said.

"You don't understand the first thing of what I do."

"No doubt."

Damien glanced at him from the side, frowned when no other reaction came. "You need me," Damien said.

"I need you to get out of the car."

Damien huffed, but gave up. There was nothing to be done here, not tonight. He opened the door with more force than was necessary, stalked around the car to pick up his bags. Damien leaned down by the open passenger door. "What about the money?" he asked. "You don't want that, either?"

Aiden barely moved, gave him a dark, sidelong glance past the shadow of his cap and the darkness of the car. "You can transfer it. I don't have to stick around for that. I'll know if you try to cheat me. You don't want that."

"Ho ho," Damien chortled. "Threats, is it now? We've come so far in such a short time."

"Yes," Aiden agreed coldly. "Let's not take it any further."

He let go of the wheel and leaned over, got hold of the door and yanked it out of Damien's grip. For a moment, his face was lit by the motel's garish sign, metallic blue and green, crawling over a thin-lipped sneer and dangerously narrowed eyes. "Ta-ta," he said as the door snapped closed. Amazing just how much disdain he put in that simple expression. He sounded almost serious…

There were many things Damien could've have said, of course, but Aiden was clearly not in the mood to listen. It was never a good idea to taunt a killer when he was itching for a fight. Damien _could_ handle Aiden, but sometimes he just preferred not to. Aiden would find some other way to get it out of his system and _then _they could talk like two adults.

Aiden drove off and left Damien standing under the motel's sign. It began to flicker in the slow drizzle of rain. He stood there for a long moment, running the scene through his head again, trying to find the fault, the flaw, the _right words _to make his bullheaded partner understand what had really happened.

They'd had a good thing, for fuck's sake, they _owned _this town together and the stupid kid would throw it all away? Over what? Over his own mistake? Because he couldn't face his own weakness? Street kids, weren't they supposed to get back up when they were beaten down? Not run away with their tail between their legs, which was _exactly _what Aiden was doing. Running away. Like running scared in the Merlaut earlier tonight. No wonder he didn't want to face the truth.

The rain picked up and Damien sighed to himself, slung his bag over his shoulder. He looked around the parking lot until he spotted the dull glow of a sign above one door. _Re epti n_. Lovely place, really. Suitable end to the night.

Damien stopped and turned back around. He pulled his phone from his pocket and called a cab. If they were covering their tracks, might as well do it thoroughly.

Aiden would be back, Damien decided as he settled into the back of the cab a little later. "Grand Aurora Hotel, please," he told the driver.

Once Aiden had cooled off and thought things through, he'd figure out who really was to blame, who'd lost his nerve in exactly the wrong moment. Of course, he'd never admit it, not to himself and much less to Damien. Instead, he'd find some manipulative, roundabout way to make sure that what happened in the Merlaut stayed in the Merlaut. Aiden was like that. Difficult, but probably not stupid enough to let this be the end of it.

At the very least, when he ran out of money he'd learn the hard way that he wasn't ready to do the heavy lifting when it came to hacking. It'd bring him back like nothing else could. He could earn his living taking Fixer contracts, but Aiden hated not being his own man. No, he'd come around and in a few weeks, they'd be back in the game with nothing much changed. Except for that score they had to settle.

Damien was rather looking forward to getting even.

He smirked a little in the dark, picturing it.

* * *

><p><em>End of _All Good Things<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> I'm... dissatisfied... with this. Long experience has taught me not to harp on about such things for too long. After all, why inflict it on unsuspecting readers if I genuinely think it sucks? I don't think it sucks, but it could be better, I just don't know where exactly it goes wrong.

Regardless,_** thanks for reading!**_


	7. Dogtown - Part 1

**Author's Note:** I'm writing this mini-arc solely for myself, it's almost a vanity thing, really. I enjoy writing it, but I have no idea whether it's interesting or entertaining to anyone else. It's also heading some dark places in the upcoming installments. It's currently planned to be in four parts.

* * *

><p><em>[this takes place in the summer 1993]<em>

**_Dogtown (Part 1)**

* * *

><p>The woman walked with an energetic, feathering stride, an athlete's body dressed in a pale business suit, it's masculine cut offset by her high heels and perfectly painted face. Large sunglasses hid her eyes and the direction of her gaze. She was not the kind of woman who often walked into the Dogtown Café &amp; Diner on the eastern end of the Wards. But then, she was not the kind of woman who didn't go where she wanted.<p>

Late afternoon in the Dogtown was a busy time, shift workers to and from work stopped by to grab a bite to eat, gang-bangers of all kinds hung around outside, but the Dogtown was mostly neutral territory, insurance all paid up.

The gang-bangers outside had given the woman a wide berth and while her expensive rental was diligently eyed up, no one went to try anything.

The Dogtown was too packed inside, not enough room to give her the same courtesy, but she had no trouble finding her way to the counter. She leaned in under the side-glancing scrutiny of the patrons nearest her.

"I'm looking for someone called Danny Boy," she said after a moment, when Mal, the Dogtown's owner, had sidled over to her and gave her a vaguely worried look. No doubt, he had seen enough trouble walk through the door to recognise it and _no doubt _he had long since made his peace with it.

"Haven't heard that name in a while," he said carefully. The thoughts chasing each other across his face, obvious and very clear: he wanted to lie about it, but didn't think he'd get away with it.

The woman waited, poised patience in the blue-collar pressure of the people around her. Even the summer heat failed to leave even a trace of sweat on her immaculate suit.

Mal twisted the dishtowel in his hands, his gaze darting ahead of them before he pointed in a gesture he tried to abort halfway through. "Table in the corner. The one with the books."

The woman nodded, gave him a cool smile. "Thank you," she said and left the counter.

"Uhm," Mal said, cleared his throat when she stopped without turning back. "Don't call him that? He doesn't like it."

The woman made no answer, but found her way through the crowd with practiced ease, a shark cutting through water, the path closed behind her, covering her tracks perfectly.

The table Mal had pointed her to was slightly overcrowded with five young men. They seemed to be finished with their dinner — stakes of plates and cups, some remnant French fries being used as projectiles in some minor conflict. As the woman came to a halt by the table, all of it stopped. She studied them all through the shielding dark of her sunglasses, one after the other as they worked out how to react to her presence. She had to give them credit, though, only one was dumb enough to whistle, the others restricted themselves to some version of a dirty grin.

_The one with the books _hadn't been paying attention to the others. In fact, just passing by one might even have assumed he was some college student, lost in the Wards, cornered and about to be mugged by a bunch of gang-bangers. But then, just a pile of books didn't make a student and he seemed too relaxed to be the designated victim. He'd lifted one leg up and wedged it against the table, balanced a cup of coffee on top of it.

A book was open in front of him, a pile of others towered at his side. She glanced over their back-covers for a curious collection of pulp fiction novels and psychology textbooks, though not all titles were visible.

While his friends studied her openly, he took a moment longer, turned first his head toward her and let his gaze trail behind, away from the book as if reluctant to leave it behind and turn his attention to less important matters.

"I'm looking for Danny Boy."

The others jeered a little, laughed. The one with the books frowned and said, "Aiden," in a low-voiced tone that contained, somewhere hidden in its cadences, a distinct warning. _This better be the only time. _

"Wow, Aiden," one of the others said, grinning. "Hot chick looking for you, Leslie hears of it, she'll ditch you again."

He didn't look away from when his friends laughed, held on to a studied casualness, but the corner of his mouth twitched. "That's the funny part, because you wouldn't get to score even if there wasn't any competition."

"Shit, man, you know Leslie can do better than you any day of the week, right?" the other huffed.

"Probably does, too," a third offered and earned himself a round of laughter.

Before their banter took on a life of its own, though educational as it might have been, the woman cut in, deep voice silencing them with careful precision, keeping her gaze resting on Aiden. "Can we talk in private?" she asked.

He made a show of thinking about it, stretching the time like chewing gum, testing her and her intentions, buying himself time to assess her, prepare some kind of strategy for the conversation to follow.

She decided to throw him a line, took off her sunglasses, met his gaze without blinking for what felt like a long time. Eventually, he looked his friends over and said, "Okay, guys, give us some space."

No argument, no hesitation, the young men filed out of the booth and chatted their way through the diner, making their way carelessly as they went. She watched them go with mild disinterest before she slipped into the seat opposite him.

He let the book fall closed, pushed it aside a little, set the cup on the table and took his knee down, sat a little straighter, finally focussing on her openly.

"You're younger than I thought," she said, honesty for once. She hoped he knew how to appreciate it.

He _was _young, not even twenty, probably tall when he was standing up, long-limbed but densely muscled, dressed in torn jeans and a washed out T-shirt. Tousled hair fell into his face, did nothing to soften the sharp gaze of his eyes, or hide the fading bruise along his cheekbone.

"Why?" he asked.

"You are a member of the Dead Men?"

"_Walking,"_ he said, a little sharply. "Dead Men _Walking. _Important distinction, but I'm not a member anymore. No future in gang violence."

She smiled faintly, studying him again. "True, that. I have a job I need help with."

"Why?"

"I need someone native to the Wards…"

"No," he interrupted, raised his voice just slightly. "Why _me. _You don't know me."

She pretended to play with the sunglasses in her hands, watched it rather than him, before she spoke again. "A friend of a friend pointed me in your direction. You sounded… promising. I can hire muscle at every corner, but this job needs a bit more than that."

"Sounds illegal," he observed, unimpressed.

"Do you mind?"

"Are you wearing a wire?" Not missing a beat, not quite serious, but unwilling to dismiss the possibility.

"No, not today," she answered with another smile.

"What did Marston say?"

The remark did take her by surprise and she allowed herself to let it show, if only for a moment. She wasn't here to find a dumb thug, if she treated him like one, he'd just refuse and go his own way.

"How do you know?"

"I haven't been to Marston's gym in years," he said. "You called me Danny Boy, the timeframe fits. What'd he say?"

She leaned her head back, watched him again, gauging him and what he might be thinking, what he might want to hear, what would sway him to her cause. He hadn't asked what it was, it hadn't escaped her.

"Fierce, that's what he said," she offered. "Smart. Stubborn."

"Not interested," he added dryly. And doing a good job of not showing how her list of attributes must stroke his ego. His features didn't soften, didn't abandon the laid-back indifference he was affecting.

"You haven't heard my offer."

"It sounds too fishy already. More trouble than it's worth, anyway."

She let her gaze wander away from him, around the room and through the window, the shabby cars on the parking lot there, the drug dealers and gang-bangers and other lost youth hanging around between them. "So you're content working in that Internet café? Cold booting computers for people too dumb to do it themselves? That's it? That's all it's ever going to be, you know."

She snapped her attention back to him, just in time to catch the beginning of a sneer on his face. He checked it immediately, took a sip from his coffee to hide it. He took a deep breath, turned it into a sigh. "Hard, honest work, says my mother."

"Barely enough to get by, on a good day," she stated. "Enough to drive a man up the walls. It's like cabin fever, when the cabin is everywhere."

She tapped her sunglasses on the table as she continued, "I'll tell you what I see, just now, just talking with you for no more than a few minutes. I think Marston was right, _half-_right at least. You're the man I need, I think. And I've got the offer _you_ need."

"Alright," he said, finally. "What offer?"

She gave him another smile, brighter this time. More teeth. She looked through the window again. "What do you see out there?"

"Is this where I'm supposed to come to the conclusion of 'opportunity'?" He drawled the last word as if it left a bad taste on his tongue.

"That's my line. Cheesy I confess, but true," she nodded slowly, watched him from the corner of her eyes. "Chicago is a big city, and yes, there are opportunities, but that's not what I mean. It's a city full of _problems." _

It earned her a little chuckle, "No shit."

She focused on him again and into that sudden apparition of levity, she asked, "Have you ever killed someone?"

For just a moment, the mask fell and he was _young, _raw and angry and trapped. She had suspected as much, investigating him. She would not just walk up to any random man pointed out to her, plot murder with him in a public place. She was not that stupid. This _could _come and bite her, later, if he failed or broke. You could never trust young men to remember they were supposed to be more than bluster and bravado, especially if they had learned these things on the street.

Aiden stared at her, searched her face as if looking for a hook he could use to tear her open. _Psychological Models of Emotion, _was the title of the book he had been reading. The muscles along his jaw twitched and tightened before he answered.

"Not on purpose," he said.

She let him flounder in the wake of what might be guilt, what might be uncertainty, _what might be _his own struggles with his nature and the future he wanted to avoid. It was the other half, the things Marston had not said, because he was not equipped to identify them. She knew, though, had known the moment Marston had described him.

Irritated, Aiden crossed his arms over his chest, stared at her hard. "Still waiting for that offer."

"It's a necessary preamble," she said, matching his tone and his impatience. "Someone has to die. And I want you to help me. Three thousand if you do."

More money than he likely ever seen in one place, but they both knew it and so the knowledge carried less weight than it should. He certainly didn't seem impressed. He smiled a little, even, a frosty expression in the summer heat.

"You're not wearing a wire," he concluded.

"You're still hung up on that," she said, bemusedly. "Are you that important?"

He shrugged. "No idea, but I'm not stupid."

"No, I don't think you are," she agreed, a concession. He wasn't going to be sweet talked into something he had already figured out would change his life. He only had to realise it would change for the _better_.

"You're familiar with the Wards," she said, pulling them both back from an edge. Business-like in her tone and manner, confident in ways he still needed to learn. "You have your gang connection, but like you've said, you aren't on the inside anymore. You know how to fight, Marston said it and I can tell. And, yes, you're capable to have more than one complicated thought in your head at any one time. Those are valuable assets. You should trade on what you have. Anyway, there is a man hiding with the Viceroys. He's stolen information from the Club and he's threatened selling it to the police…"

"Bullshit," he interrupted. "You know what Viceroys do to snitches? They bleed them out."

"Not when they stand to gain. The snitch sells on the Club, cops take out a few high-ranking Club members, Viceroys move in. At least, that's the plan. And that, right there, is the _problem _I'm being paid to fix."

"Messy," he said, still not impressed, still not tempted by the money, or at least controlled enough not to show it if he was. "Do it without me."

He slipped out of the booth, leaned forward to pick up his pile of books.

"That's it?" she asked.

He shrugged, pulled a backpack from under the table, took a leather jacket out and stuffed the books in. "Yes, that's it. I got to pick up groceries before I head to work. I'm already running late."

But he lingered, just a moment. Nothing on his face that would give him away, but the time he stayed longer than he needed to. Like he was asking her to convince him, really, as if he just wasn't ready to face up to what she suspected of him.

He was right, though, she didn't really know him and she had just outlined a very dangerous plan to him. "Information is power," she said. "Who will you sell it to?"

He shook his head, slowly. Smiled a little as he did. "I'm not getting into it. I ditched the Dead Men because of shit like this. I'm not…" and he stopped as if caught, green eyes narrowing suddenly.

She flexed her shoulders, moved out of the booth to stand facing him, too close, she had to look up a little to do it. "How melodramatic," she said. "You're not a killer, is that it? That what you were going to say? It's such a stupid line. It changes nothing about who you are. Beat up some idiot, sell some drugs, kill some stupid fuck, or _work yourself into the ground for the next fifty years_. You're the same man, start to finish. You can use what you have, or piss it all away."

He was looking down at her, still frowning, still not quite as certain of it all as he pretended to be. It wasn't money, she thought, it was about the other things she'd said.

Almost imperceptibly, he shook his head again, stepped aside and began pushing through the slightly thinned crowds. Glancing back over his shoulder, he said, "No."

Left her standing there as he made his way outside, contemplating her options. She _had _ran a risk, talking to him so openly and it might yet blow up right in her face, but if she didn't understand people the way she did, she would be dead, many times over. He would sit on this and if all the Wards went up in flames in a gang war over it.

She turned around and stalked him, found him outside by his motorcycle, helmet in hand. He rolled his eyes a little when he spotted her.

"Look," he said. "Forget it. I'm out. _Out, _okay? The Dead Men were all over me for weeks after I quit. I had to break a few noses to make them stop. You want a taste? Just keep following me."

She smirked a little. "I don't think you'd get a punch in. You'd hesitate. You think too much about the wrong things."

He studied her, pensively. Then put his head to the side a little. "I'd toss the helmet at your face. Maybe I'd get lucky, but I guess you'd catch it. You still got the sunglasses in your hand, messes with your priorities. Gives me a second, you look like you could fight blind, so a second is all I'll have. You wear the wrong shoes, that's your weak spot. Gets you to your knees in that second, my elbow into your neck before you can drop the helmet and your head into the concrete _or _the helmet, depending how you fall over. I want twenty percent."

She had listened to his outline with growing amusement, not nearly small-minded enough to be surprised or offended at his lack of gentlemanly sensibilities. At the same time, she realised he'd played her. He might as well have thrown that punch, because she felt it connect perfectly with his closing line. The little punk had never intended to reject her offer, she thought she had been talking him into it, while they'd really been _negotiating_.

"Twenty percent?" she repeated.

"This is big," he stated. "It's Club bigwigs on the line and it sounds like it could escalate pretty damn quickly, if they're willing to pay an outside agent. I could end up in the middle of a gang war with all sides gunning for me. Three grand isn't a serious offer. Give me twenty of what you get and I'll help you."

She chuckled, "I guess you're lucky I'm not doing this as a favour, then."

"I don't know. You owing me a favour. Could be useful."

She arched her brows, unfolded her sunglasses and put them on. "Careful there," she warned with strained mirth. "If you think you understand the game, you really haven't understood the game. I'll call you tomorrow."

* * *

><p><em>End of _Dogtown (Part 1)<em>

* * *

><p><strong>More Notes: <strong>Internet cafés didn't really become widespread until 1994-1995, but it makes sense for the world of Watch Dogs to be a bit ahead of us.

The Fixer, as almost all my original characters, had her gender determined by coinflip and I rather like the way she's turned out. I didn't coinflip Leslie, because that could have been a bit of a hassle.

A random name generator produced 'Dogtown Café' and I fell in love with it.

It's possible I might contradict some information on Aiden's past that's found in Dark Clouds, but I think Dogtown takes place earlier than what was in the book.


	8. Dogtown - Part 2

**_Dogtown Part 2**

* * *

><p>Aiden played his part. He played <em>all <em>his parts and more. He found her the rat, Liam Corvis, holed up and under guard in a Viceroy safe-house, deep inside their territory. He found the man and he carefully constructed them a way inside that stronghold after figuring out, Corvis would be impossible to extract without an invading army, which was more attention than her employers wanted to attract.

Instead, Aiden tapped into their phone, using a curious, homemade contraption; a half-gutted phone on one end was the only component she could identify.

She had called herself 'Sonya' on the phone, talking to his girlfriend and the way he said the name made it quite clear he didn't trust a syllable of it. She watched him now, where he sat on the floor, cross-legged beside the pried-open distributer box in the basement of a house marked for demolition. She watched him while they waited for a call and he pretended not to notice, or at least not to care that she was doing it.

Heat lingered in the basement, worse than out on the street where evening had brought wind and a hint of thunder. Sweat-dampened lines followed the leather straps of the gun holster he wore and he would sometimes tuck and pull on it, less comfortable of its presence than he liked to show.

"Won't the phone companies be able to detect this?" she asked.

"Of course, I don't really have good equipment. Too expensive. This shit? Screws over an entire housing block," he nodded. "If they get enough complaints, they'll even send a technician. Maybe before Christmas."

She settled her shoulder into the wall and looked around the room, ugly graffiti on the walls and a soiled mattress in a corner giving off a subtle stench in the heat. She heard him shift and looked back at him, found him flexing his shoulders into the holster and resettle himself, extend his legs in front of him.

She paid him because she'd known he could track her mark in the Wards, quicker and easier than she could herself, but she needed more from him than just that. She'd paid attention and after their first conversation in the Dogtown, she had looked even closer. Nothing she knew suggested he would know how to tap a phone. It was true, he hadn't been subtle, he lacked the tools and the necessity to be, but it made her wonder regardless. If you _gave_ him those tools…

The phone rang, pulling her from her line of thoughts. He gave her a quick, triumphant grin and jumped to his feet and picked up the phone, smoothing his features before he answered. "Good afternoon, DA Turner's office, Ripley speaking."

She arched her brows, but held her tongue, letting him play out his charade. His voice sounded differently, his pronunciation suddenly wiped clean of all traces of a Wards childhood.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Turner isn't available. Can I help you? - - - Ah, I see, yes, we've arranged that a new negotiator will take over the case. She's one of our best, I'm sure we'll all benefit if this isn't being drawn out more than necessary. - - - Yes, she is en route right now and should be with you in half an hour. - - - I don't care if it's convenient. _No _one cares if it's convenient. This is what it's going to be. It'd be best if you remembered who's on the side of the law here. - - - Make sure our negotiator is treated with respect. - - - Absolutely. Better safe than sorry. - - - You'll hear from us."

He hung up, grin crawling back in place of the mask he had affected, selling the story. Not many people would have known your expression will reflect in your voice. Not many would have bothered.

"It's still risky," she observed. "They can have other people they can call. We could be walking into a trap."

He fixed her, always that hard stare as if he was in a contest all the time, a constant challenge to the world. "This gets you in," he pointed out, quite clearly he had expected something closer to praise than what he was getting. "Gives you the time you need. You just need to off the guy, right?"

She hesitated, gaze wandering around the room for a moment before she answered. Slowly, she said, "Not quite."

"What?"

"I need to make sure he hasn't stashed away some kind of insurance in case of his death. At the very least, he'll need it to make sure the Viceroys hold up their end of the bargain."

She could see him processing the new information. She hadn't expected him to be quite so thoughtful, she had steeled herself to deal with self-aggrandising posturing and arrogance. She had seen it coming, seen him rub his asking price into her face as if she was the amateur and not the other way around. What she had got, however, was a very young man with more potential than he seemed to realise.

It didn't escape her that he didn't comment on that new development, only turned away and began to dissemble his equipment with quick fingers. "You're here with that rental?" he asked, his back to her.

"Yes."

"Good thing we're in Dead Men territory, then."

She let the reprimand brush off. "I thought the _Walking _part was important."

"It is," he confirmed pointedly. He was done packing and got up, turned to face her again. He had taken a suit jacket from his pack and shook it out in an effort to smooth it. He slipped it on, squared his shoulders into it, tucked on the straps of the gun holster again.

"We'll take your car."

* * *

><p>Hard, thrumming music spilled out through the open windows into the street, loud enough to make the floors vibrate and the walls shiver. All the rooms were brightly lit and the entire neighbourhood could have seen the Viceroys as they hung around the house. A slow trickle of coming and going, cars parked up and down the street. <em>Everyone <em>with eyes to see knew something was going down in that place, but everyone who ever got this deep into Viceroy territory knew how to keep their heads down and maybe make a little on the side, too.

The machine-gun fire lyrics stalked them through the house, Aiden pinned behind her left shoulder like a cross between a secretary and a bodyguard. The Viceroys further away from her wolf-whistled only once she was out of the immediate vicinity. She supposed it counted as respect as far as that went.

She had counted at least twenty on the way in. More than enough and no one seemed to care about Aiden's gun, her own or the contents of the briefcase she carried.

"We can talk over there," Corvis said without any prompting. An otherwise handsome, middle-aged man, he seemed weary and disheveled, obviously ill-at-ease with his hosts. He led them into an unoccupied bedroom. The sheets were crumpled and someone's clothes were strewn at the back of the room.

As they walked through the door, she passed the briefcase to Aiden and hung back, gently let the door fall closed. There was no key in the lock, but she'd expected as much. She stayed by the door, only turned around.

"Just so we're clear," Corvis began. He picked up a chair from the side of the wall, shook it out so the pair of jeans slipped from it. He swirled the chair around and thudded it to the floor. "My terms haven't changed. Have a seat, lady."

She crossed her arms over her chest, standing just clear of the door and by then Aiden was already on him. Aiden got him in a choke hold, got a good grip on him before Corvis recovered his senses. Corvis began to lean to the side, gripping Aiden's elbow. Watching, Sonya knew the move and where it would be going. Apparently, so did Aiden. He followed the move and let go before Corvis had a chance to trip him. Kicked him in the back of the knees instead and Corvis went down to one knee and Aiden pressed him the rest of the way.

"Liam!" she called and took a step forward. "Stop making this harder on yourself."

Corvis made another attempt to free himself, but it was only half-hearted. He glared at her from his downed position, then Aiden yanked him back up and sat him down on the chair he'd so sardonically just offered Sonya.

Corvis had enough sense to realise yelling for help wasn't going to do much good. By the time anyone heard him through the racket, he'd be silenced a dozen different ways. Aiden pulled his arms back roughly, pulled the zip ties from his pocket.

"_Relax _your hands," Aiden ordered and Sonya could watch as the fight slowly trickled out of Corvis. She knew from some of Aiden's research that Corvis had been here for several weeks, as much a prisoner of the Viceroys as he was under their protection. She wasn't familiar with the details of his story, what had prompted him to sell out the Club and run all the way to the Wards. Both seemed to be stupid moves, but it was far from the first idiocy she encountered in her line of work.

Aiden got back to his feet and prowled the room behind Corvis, who wagged his head back and forth, trying to get him back into his sight.

"Shit," Corvis said. He seemed to steel himself, met her gaze and said, "What now?"

Aiden came to a halt behind him and if Corvis heard the rustle of the plastic bag, if he recognised the warning or not. There was nothing he could do, anyway, when Aiden slipped the bag over his head and down to this throat, pulled it tight. Corvis struggled, but ineffectively. Aiden had not only bound his hands, but also tied him to the chair. Corvis wasn't going to go anywhere. The plastic bag expanded and retracted with his breathing, more frantic every second. Condensation filled the bag and obscured his face.

Across the room, Sonya found Aiden more interesting than Corvis. Face set in dull concentration, focussed on what he was doing, but not really paying attention beyond it. He looked up to meet her gaze to see her slight nod. Abruptly, he eased the hold and pulled the bag away. Corvis panted wildly, sinking down in his chair. He let his head fall back, putting on something very close to a smile. "You're really good at this," he drawled, still struggling for air.

Unimpressed, Aiden settled both hands heavily on Corvis' shoulder and leaned forward a little. "We're playing a classic game of good cop, bad cop," he said coolly.

Corvis laughed, still coughing in between hasty gulps of air. "Aren't you cute."

"Well, yes," Aiden agreed thoughtfully. He leaned back again, sorted out the plastic bag, making it rustle more than necessary. "I'm the good cop," Aiden said and slipped the bag back on.

Rap music beat through the closed door, swallowing the pitiful sounds Corvis managed to make. Aiden pulled the bag away and watched as Corvis struggled for breath, but never gave him more than two hastily drawn gulps.

"Don't you…" Corvis gasped in a reprive. "Don't you want to ask anything? Or are you just getting off on this?"

Aiden was about to pull the bag down again, but Sonya stopped him with a gesture. She fixed on Corvis.

"Oh Liam, we all know why we're here," she said with mock-gentleness. "And we all _know _how it's going to end. Let me say it again, don't make this harder than it has to be."

Corvis' face was bright red, eyes bloodshot and his entire body had been drenched in sweat in only a few minutes. He was still trying to laugh it off, unsettle her, or perhaps he was just playing for time.

Back in the car, Aiden had said, "Difficult to crack."

Yes, and they didn't have a lot of time to do it. Too soon one of the Viceroys would barge in, just to ask something or perhaps to leer at her some more. There was nothing they could do if Corvis hadn't talked by then and wasn't dead. They'd have to fight their way out of the house and through the neighbourhood and she'd prefer much better odds.

"You'll kill me," Corvis said. "Or your boy-toy will. I don't know why I should give you anything."

"Because we have at least an hour before any of your _friends _will wonder what's going on," she said reasonably. "An hour can be a very long time."

Without warning, the music cut out and a shockwave of silence washed over them, froze them in place for barely a second. Corvis was the first to recover, as if in slow-motion Sonya saw him draw a deep breath to use the tiny opening and shout for help. The very same instant, Aiden snapped forward, wrapped a hand around Corvis' throat from behind and the other down over his mouth, dragging the man back against him for more leverage.

The yell dissipated in a muffled screech, probably not loud enough to be heard in the next room. This time, Corvis didn't stop struggling, tore his body sideways and forward, made the whole chair bounce, trying to free his mouth while there was even a hint of an opening.

Sonya took a step back, placed her hand on the doorknob. If someone tried coming in, she'd pretend she'd been about to leave and slip out, hopefully without anyone getting a good look inside and at Corvis. She'd block anyone, for better or for worse.

Outside, Viceroys yelled at each other, obviously annoyed at the lack of music. It wasn't clear what had happened, Sonya guessed a dispute over the choice of music, or perhaps some idiot had just tripped over the cord.

She waited, one hand on the doorknob and the other on the gun at her hip and the minutes trickled away agonisingly slowly.

_Can it be that it was all so simple then…_

It started again, drowning out any argument the Viceroys might still be having. She dared to relax a little, looked back at Aiden and Corvis just in time to see Aiden snatch his hand back and yelp. Corvis must have bitten him.

Aiden took a step to the side and punched him in the face, hard enough to make Corvis' head snap to the side. It'd leave a bruise, make a point, but a it also bought Aiden a precious second in which it catch and hold her gaze. He wanted to say something, she could tell and they wouldn't have the chance to talk strategy, not in front of Corvis.

"God, you amateurs," Corvis said and chuckled as he pulled himself straight again with some effort.

"Shut up!" Aiden snapped irritably. Without any further preamble, he pulled his gun and came around to face Corvis, waved it in his face while looking over his shoulder at Sonya. "I say we just shoot him!" Aiden said. "Be done with it. Half the job is better than nothing, isn't it?"

"Are you stupid?" Sonya asked back, sticking to some imagined script she had never seen. Her little punk was improvising, picking up the pieces as they'd been thrown at him. All she had to do was play her part.

She made a dismissive gesture, scowled. "Put that thing away until I tell you to use it."

He waved the gun some more, than gave an angry snarl and lowered it, hovered in the open space between Corvis and Sonya in a pretence of indecisiveness.

"Just can't get the help these days, right?" Corvis remarked, still red-faced but inappropriately entertained. Aiden snapped around and punched him again in exactly the same spot as before. Corvis' amusement faltered under the new pain. Aiden raised the gun back up, put the muzzle under Corvis' chin and pushed up, forced him to face him.

"Doesn't matter," Aiden snarled. "You're going down."

Corvis found a dirty grin and put it on, but a hard jab of the gun made him keep his silence.

"You are _not_ shooting him," Sonya stepped in. "Now do what I tell you."

Aiden took his time, bared teeth in Corvis' face before he retreated in tense, jerky movement, gun lowered again as he turned to face her. With his back to Corvis, he was much more composed, but spoke through clenched teeth anyway. "He's not going to snap, what do you want me to do?"

"I like the part where I'm not shot," Corvis piped in. "And don't punch me again, thank you. I've got a solution for you."

Sonya came forward a few steps until she was close enough to tower over him as she stared him down. Aiden began to pace through the room, agitation obviously riding him hard.

"Let me hear it," Sonya said. "Better not be wasting more time."

Corvis chewed on his lower lip for a moment, glanced from her to Aiden and back. "The thing is, I don't have anything with me. The Viceroys would just use it and I'd have nothing. It's in a safety deposit box. Got someone I know. Owes me a big favour. Club don't know about him, Viceroys can't get to him. Without the evidence I'm just some guy who tells a few stories."

Aiden had circled around, was back behind Corvis and was giving the plastic bag a kick. It chittered across the floor.

"You give up the evidence and I don't kill you," Sonya said. "Is that your idea?"

Corvis shrugged. "I'm not dangerous to anyone anymore. I can lead the Viceroys on for a while. Cops will take me anyway, I can still give them _something, _but the Club's going to live it down." He hesitated, twisted his head a little, trying to get a look at Aiden.

"Minor drawbacks for everyone," Corvis concluded. "But everyone can live with it."

He pushed his chin forward. The bruise along his cheekbone was beginning to show. "Unless you want your boy to beat up on me a little more and then, you'll still not have what you want."

"You'd be dead," Sonya said. "It gains you nothing when I lose."

Corvis sighed. "Look at it this way, I'm not going to enjoy dying, this way especially, but that's all you'll have."

Sonya said nothing, considered and not all of it was acting. Time was ticking away and every second that passed made their position more precarious. "How?" she demanded. "How will you do it?"

"Well you'll leave and I call and…"

"No," she interrupted with thin impatience. "You give me everything. Your contact at the bank and how to access your safety deposit box. I can call one of my people right now and make sure. _Then _we'll leave."

"Then you'll shoot me," Corvis said.

"I give you my word?" she offered with a vague smile. There was no reason to pretend otherwise, he wasn't going to buy it, not from her. Aiden picked up the thread as if they'd rehearsed it.

"Come on," he said to Sonya. "Man's an asshole, but he's down and out. If he can't give anything to the cops, he won't make witness protection. The Club can get to him in jail. We don't have to kill him in the middle of Viceroy territory."

She eyed him across Corvis' shoulder. "You're worried about that."

"_Yes," _he hissed. "Yes, i'm worried. It's the _Black Viceroys._ They've got some weight, alright? Messing with them is bad for your health."

She thought about it, narrowed eyes and her gaze between Aiden and Corvis, contemplating her chances. She pressed her lips into a thin line, then, finally nodded, slowly and almost imperceptibly.

"He lives," she told Aiden, than turned to look at Corvis. "But he gives up his information right now."

_Come on, bite, _she thought and didn't let it show. The calculations ran visibly across Corvis' expression, but changing too quickly to be clearly labelled. He'd been rattled, of course, by their sudden appearance, by the asphyxiation, by the unexpected appearance of an opening. No doubt, Corvis had been around, he knew things well enough to know he couldn't quite trust them. Aiden's youth was selling his lie, the hints of breaking at the seams, a man out of his depth and too inexperienced to hide it. But it didn't depend on whether Corvis believed Aiden, it depended on whether he believed he would get to _live_ if he gave them what they wanted.

Aiden was still pacing, seemingly growing more nervous by the second. In fact, Sonya thought he was beginning to overdo it. He had allied himself with Corvis, if Corvis thought he couldn't trust him he'd just close up again.

"Sit _down,"_ she ordered sharply.

Aiden stopped, pivoted on one heel. Marching past, he stopped by Corvis' side and leaned down. "Fucking take the deal, you dumbfuck," he hissed into his ear.

He picked his seat on the edge of the bed, ready to spring back to his feet instantly. Sonya turned her attention back to Corvis, studied him in the comparative silence. Corvis had a difficult decision to make and the time it took alone would have made it clear that he didn't like any of his option. Which was, really, the point. There were countless different ways to put the thumbscrews on someone.

Corvis took a deep breath, slipped down a little in his seat. He glanced to the side, to Aiden, in an effort to assess him. Aiden had been flip-flopping throughout their little talk, gone from cooly controlled to aggressive to uncertainly desperate. Not the man you'd want to rely on for your survival…

"You're safe, asshole," Aiden said, feeling the scrutiny. "She's not going to kill you if you give her what she wants. I swear."

… but if he was all you got, you'd take it, wouldn't you?

"Or you keep stalling," Sonya added. "Your choice."

Corvis let his eyes fall closed. When he opened them again, he looked back at Sonya. "Alright, alright," voice dropped to a resigned whisper.

It took more prodding than that to get him to spill everything and a few more well-phrased threats to make sure he wasn't trying to lead them on. He told them the name of his contact, what to say and what _not _to say, how to get to the safety deposit box in the bank. And at the end of it, it was still a risk, if only a calculated one.

The Viceroys had started wearing Corvis down long before Sonya had showed up. This, all of it, hadn't been his plan. Corvis had reduced himself to a pawn, there were only so many moves left to him.

Finally, Sonya nodded, "Okay, thank you. I'll make a call, make sure this is legit."

She slipped out the door without leaving much of a gap, found the nearest Viceroy and got him to show her to a phone.

* * *

><p>"So what's your story, kiddo?" Corvis asked when Sonya left. He could just about make him out behind him, perched on the edge of the unmade bed.<p>

"I don't have a story."

Corvis chuckled. "Come on, look at me, nothing to lose, nothing to give," he said, shaking his head. "You shouldn't be here. Look around you, all this hardcore gangster shit? You aren't built for it. I should know, it took me twenty fucking years to figure out _I _wasn't built for it. I wish someone would have told me. Of course, back then, I was too stupid to listen."

Aiden didn't answer and if Corvis felt his gaze on him, it didn't make him much more uncomfortable than he already was. He flexed his shoulders carefully, put his head from one side to the other. He laughed a little, just as humourlessly as the first time.

"You'll want to get out of this while you can," he continued. "You won't listen, I can tell. Money seems good, doesn't it? Not much else to do for a kid of the 'hoods, right? Thing is, you almost had it, you know? You scared me in the beginning, seriously. Wouldn't have _worked, _of course. You should see my boss' right hand guy. You haven't been threatened until that guy does it, a class all his own, let me tell you."

"Why don't you shut up?" Aiden cut in, low-voiced and testily.

"You wanted me to talk, remember?"

"Yeah," Aiden agreed and something very close to a smile slipped into his voice. "You _did. _You can stop now. I don't need your lecture."

"I'm just trying to help, kiddo," Corvis pointed out, though a frown had replaced the world-weary humour of before. "You keep doing this, maybe you'll have a few good years and one morning, you'll wake up and realise you can't go back and the bloodhounds are about to get you. If it's not the cops, its the gangs, or the mob, or some random Fixer earning her own living. I guess it sounds like fun, early on, and then, you know happens then?"

Dryly, he said, "The suspense is killing me."

"Ha ha," Corvis made. "It's not really funny, because eventually you just start _losing. _Someone gets the jump on you, it always happens. Someone always gets hurt. If you're lucky, _you _are the one who gets hurt. Or it's your woman, your child, your best friend or just the chick selling you coffee down the road. And that's going to stack up, you know. You won't stop losing, you can't protect everyone and you do this shit long enough, you'll never run out of enemies who want to hurt you any way they can."

Shifting, whisper of blankets and the faint groan of the bed. Aiden got up, stood for a moment, perhaps in indecision, before he walked around the bound man to face him.

"Is that how it was for you?" he asked. "Is that why you decided to rat on your boss?"

Corvis snorted. "Don't give me that loyalty bullshit. There's never been honour among thieves. That's for Hollywood. The real world is just dog eat dog. Loyalty is a question of payment, entirely negotiable. Or fear and intimidation. Usually in some combination of all three..."

He put his head back, stared up at Aiden again, wry smile back on his face. He was going to say something else, something _more, _but he didn't get the chance.

Sonya hurried back into the room, snapped the door closed behind her and went to the briefcase, still open on the bed since Aiden had taken out the zip ties.

"We need to leave," she said. She pulled out her gun and began screwing the silencer on.

"What happened?" Aiden asked.

She looked up. "Real cops are here."

She stepped away from the bed and put held the gun to Corvis' face. "Good thing his info checked out."

"Oh shit," Corvis said, laughed and looked at Aiden. "You _lied. _Should've known. And I really was trying to help you, you know."

Aiden's expression gave nothing away, it didn't change, but he stepped forward and put his hand on Sonya's gun.

"I gave my word," he said earnestly and Corvis just laughed again, although it came close to hysterics, especially in light of Sonya's moritfied face. Aiden locked his gaze with hers, keeping his grip on the gun and for some reason, she actually let him take it from her hand. It caused a little spark of hope to sneak up on Corvis, but it faltered in that stage.

Rather than lower the gun, Aiden held it now himself, turned to face Corvis. His hand was steady, but something else was in his eyes, close to fear, or possibly even awe, but Corvis was the only one privy to it.

Sonya gave him some space but said, "One to the head, two to the heart. And don't draw it out, we've got to go."

Aiden hesitated, brows drawn together into an almost thoughtful expression and the gun still steady in his hand. Corvis calmed, hysterics bleeding away and met his gaze, across the muzzle of the gun, held it.

"One day, you'll be in my place," Corvis said. "You'll regret this moment then."

Aiden pulled the trigger and the sound it made through the silencer was unsatisfying and got lost in the din still pressing through the walls. Corvis slumped in the chair, his body twitched in dying before it went limp.

"Okay, let's go," Sonya said.

She only spared it a quick look, tracking the bullet-holes on Corvis' body, assessing them. Without taking his gaze off Corvis, Aiden handed her gun back.

* * *

><p><em>End of _Dogtown Part 2<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Reference: <strong>The name 'Ripley' comes from Tom Ripley.

**Author's Note: **I'm having a phase. I think everything I write is crap. So is everything I've _ever _written. And I want to apologise profusely for inflicting it on the public, even if barely anyone is reading it and I've got to assume those actually know what they are doing...

Also, after some careful consideration I've come to the conclusion that I inhabit a very odd parallel universe in which Aiden Pearce has a very complicated, fascinating and charismatic personality (as opposed to the boring non-entity he seems to be for everyone else.) I seem to be all alone in that universe. You are welcome to visit, however.

I had to split this part because it got really long. Dogtown now has four parts.

I fell in love with Corvis. Can that please not happen again?


	9. Dogtown - Part 3

**_Dogtown Part 3**

* * *

><p>The Viceroys were no idiots, however, and the moment was already lost. They got as far as the ground floor, right to the front door in fact, where a tight ball of Viceroys had already congealed around three men in suits, who seemed both determined and running out of patience.<p>

When the Viceroys spotted them, several of them left their place and planted themselves squarely in Sonya's and Aiden's path.

"Now who the fuck are you?" the Viceroy in her face demanded and stepped closer, right into her personal space, his entire posture a challenge and a threat. There were too many of them surrounding them, it was impossible to be sure which of them the Viceroys considered the greater danger. But for a moment, there was a _chance, _the opportunity to seize the initiative, sprout a clever lie, confound and confuse and most importantly _leave. _

And then, someone yelled through the still beating music, "Hey Sand! Corvis's dead!"

The mood tipped instantly and Aiden tensed at her side, shifted his balance just slightly and knocked out the Viceroy in front of him with a headbutt. The man crumpled and Aiden dodged to his right before the other Viceroys could get a good hold on him. It wasn't his first fight, it wasn't even his first fight against such numbers. He was fast and brutal, he knew they didn't even have to shoot him, they just had to pile up on him long enough. There was no time for strategy, for a plan, for anything other than sheer, vicious reflex.

He punched and kicked, pivoted on his heels and slammed the flat of his hand into a face, his elbow into throat. He kicked the legs away from under a Viceroy, held onto his wrist as the man went down, let the joint twist with the force of the fall and the man screamed in sudden, spiking pain. Aiden let go at the last moment, making the point stick. He threw himself around to avoid a choke hold, snapped his head back and into the chin of the guy who had attempted it. He didn't have more time than that, because then there were too many, gripped his arms and tripped him. He took two of them down with him, but he couldn't free his arms again, couldn't get his feet back under him.

There was no way he could save it after that.

Sonya wasted no time watching Aiden take on an entire Viceroy Crew. He had bought her a moment, drawing all the attention and though some Viceroys hung back around her, one even reached for her to secure her, but it was the more manageable number. She stepped back, freed her arm easily and punched her fist into his throat. She ducked away under another Viceroy's lunge, kicked out with one leg and caught him on the thigh — pity, she'd been aiming for his crotch.

She slipped past a third, and put her elbow into his back as she passed and there they were: the three cops. They had spread out a bit when the fighting had begun, hands going to their guns, but none of them had drawn yet. For them, more than anything, the situation would be a hopeless mess and every action they took could be a mistake. Just negotiating with the Black Viceroys _at all _would be a publicity disaster if it got out.

Sonya went for the closest one, slapped his hand away from his gun and drew it herself. She wrapped her arm around him, got behind him and held. He attempted to get out of her hold, but she just held on and he stopped struggling when she pressed his gun to the side of his head. She hissed a warning in his ear.

His colleagues skittered to an uncertain halt in a small half-circle around her, edging in two different directions and trying to flank her. She yanked the cop with her, backward until she had some more space. She stared the cops down and shouted, "Stop!"

It worked on them, though it wouldn't last. The Viceroys who had been going for her followed the order, too, albeit with noticeably less enthusiasm.

Across the room, Aiden had somehow got out of the hold, struggled up on all fours. A Viceroy kicked him in the stomach, toppling him to his side. But he got hold of the leg, twisted the Viceroy to the ground and then rolled further, almost _almost _regained his feet, but a second kick aborted the move.

For a moment, she took the gun away from her hostage's head, raised it up and fired into the ceiling. A small cloud of loosened plaster and dust came down. It took a little time until the attention shifted back to her.

"Who wants a dead cop!?" she yelled on top of her lungs, riding on the bang of the gunshot.

Gradually, the dog-pile around Aiden unravelled. Vaguely, she hoped he could still walk at all, because if he couldn't, she wouldn't be able to save him.

"Alright," said one of the other cops. "Let's talk about this. No one wants this to escalate."

"Yo, who died and made you king?" a Viceroy snapped and walked up. "My house, my rules." He stared at Sonya. "And this bitch's just broke all of them."

Irritated, the cop turned to face the Viceroy. "Mr., uh, Sand, once someone takes a member of the force hostage, I don't give a flying fuck in whose house it happens. You screwed up enough for one day, let the real men handle it…"

Much as she'd like to watch them tear each other apart, Sonya cut in, "_Hey!" _and attention snapped back to her. "It's not going to be complicated. My partner and I, we'll be walking out of here and then you can finish your pissing contest."

The Viceroys had finally stepped away from Aiden and left him on his own. He was on his back, up on his elbows, looking both battered and strangely amused. He took his sweet time, too, sorting out his limbs and flexing his neck as he finally got up. He looked around and found his gun on the floor a few feet away.

He walked over, looked at the Viceroy standing over his gun and without taking his gaze off him, bent to pick up the weapon, daring him to try anything. It was the only moment of grandstanding Aiden allowed himself, he was careful as he made his way to Sonya, well out of reach of the other Viceroys or the two cops. The latter, especially, were a problem. Whatever they did, it would be justified and they could have little interest in appearing weak in the middle of _gangland_.

Walking past her, Aiden kicked open the front door, held it open while Sonya manoeuvred her hostage carefully back until she stood in the open door.

"Shoot him in the leg," she told Aiden. There was a moment of hesitation, but she had neither time nor was she in the mood to puzzle what it might be. Perhaps he'd hurt his head, it wouldn't be surprising. He aimed and shot and had enough sense to figure out what her point had been anyway.

The hostage yelled in pain and crumpled in front of the doorway when Sonya let him go, blocking the door for a few precious seconds while she ran outside and slammed it shut. With any luck, it would confuse the cops' priorities, cause another moment of confusion.

"This way!" Aiden shouted and she followed blindly, even if he wasn't running in the direction of the car. It was parked the other way, probably too far to reach before Viceroys and cops finally piled out of the door. She could already hear them behind, shouting.

She followed Aiden around a corner and into a backyard, there were no lights. It was difficult keeping track of him and he didn't bother making sure she could keep up. He cut an almost straight line through the neighbourhood, navigated backyards and untended gardens and trash-strewn back alleys without pausing for breath.

Lights, she learned quickly, were dangerous. Street-lamps were a rarity in the area and when there was light, it came from a car, Viceroys searching for them, she supposed. She didn't know what the police were doing. She heard a siren in the distance, once, but it never got close. Perhaps the cops had figured they'd just take Sand's crew and cut their losses.

Aiden broke through a low hedge and veered to the left, along the side of a house wall. He slowed and finally looked back at her.

"You good?" he asked.

"I should ask you the same thing," she said. "You got pretty banged up."

"I've had worse."

He looked around, scanned the surrounding like an animal, picking up scents. "We can take the car," he said. It was parked in front of the garage, the had the outline of vintage muscle car, but it was too dark to be sure. A car easy to steal, however, fast enough to get them out of the neighbourhood and tough enough to keep them going if they were caught.

She nodded, regardless of whether he could even see it or not. He stood a little oddly and his breathing didn't sound quite right, now that she could pay attention. She walked around him and the car to the driver's side. She tried the door and when it was locked, she smashed in the window with her gun.

She got in, leaned over and unlocked the passenger side. While Aiden climbed in, she got to work on hot-wiring the car. It had been a few years since she'd done it and perhaps Aiden would've been better suited, but she decided to leave him. He sunk into the seat with a low sigh and was still after that.

He only moved again to close his door when the car started, the roar unexpectedly loud in the otherwise quiet surrounding.

"Leave the lights off," Aiden said.

It was precarious going, narrow streets, parked on both side and littered with trash-cans and abandoned shopping carts here and there. Aiden gave direction at irregular intervals. The neighbourhood gradually changed, became less decrepit and the street-lamps were working in most place. And after a last turn, they were on the expressway and the glittering lights of the Mad Mile cityscape painted in front of them.

"Do you need a doctor? I know one who won't ask questions. He should be on duty in the hospital."

"I'm fine."

"Whatever you say," she sighed a little, but let it go, let the silence rein in their stolen car. He didn't need to prove anything to her, but there probably was no point in telling him. It wouldn't help.

After a while, she said, "How do you want your payment?"

He didn't reply immediately and when he did, it was at the end of a choked off laugh he hadn't been able to contain. "I don't even know how much it is."

She smirked a little at that. "Fifteen hundred," she said and glanced at him, still oddly huddled in his seat. His head was resting on the window, face lax in the passing of lights. He looked tired and young, fresh bruises and swollen skin. His lip was split, still glistening a little with fresh blood.

"Are you worth five times more than I thought?" She meant it more teasingly than it came out. It sounded too serious.

"Your call," he replied, matching her tone, but not looking at her.

"You need to learn to work in a team," she pointed out. "Three times you pulled a complete U-turn without warning. If I hadn't played into it, it could've ruined everything."

"You managed."

"Yes, I _managed, _but that's not teamwork."

She concentrated on the road as the traffic became thicker around them. They'd need to ditch the car soon, just in case it had been reported. Couldn't trust the cops, couldn't trust the Viceroys not to have some more connections with the cops.

"I'm wondering," she started. "When you killed Corvis… did you agree to this job just for that? I asked if you had killed before and you said no. Was that the reason?"

He said nothing for a long time, then he laughed again, but there was something rough in it this time. "Fifteen. _Grand_," he said.

"Yes, but you didn't know that," she insisted. "When we spoke in the Dogtown, you manipulated me. You made me believe you didn't want the job, but I think you've been waiting for this kind of offer for a very long time."

He shifted in his seat, sat up straighter and squared his shoulders into the upholstery. "You're asking, _seriously_, if I was just itching to kill somebody?"

"If it's making you uncomfortable," she said, but the knowing smile was in her voice. "I won't pry."

"Well, it's bullshit," he asserted and that, too, she decided to let go.

"Now, about the money…?"

"Can you give me, say, five grand in cash?" he asked, quite clearly making it up while he spoke. "And I'll set up a separate account for the rest."

"Have you ever done that before? Set up an account for illegally earned money?"

"Can't be that hard," he shrugged.

A grin stole itself on her face before she even noticed. "For you? Probably not, no."

She considered driving to the next ATM and withdraw the amount, cycling through several cards to circumvent the withdrawal limit. Slow, awkward. Safe. Or she could just drive to a safe-house and get the cash from there. She didn't know if he realised she was taking a roundabout route while she worked out just how far she was willing to trust him.

When she finally pulled to a stop in front of a high-rise apartment building, he didn't comment.

"Get rid of the car and come back here, I'll have the money ready."

He looked around for a moment. "Park it in the alley over there. I'm coming with you."

"You think I'm going to start cheating you this late in the game?"

"I _think _if you really wanted to, I'd have no way to find you," he said, then put his head to the side a little. "I'll get rid of the car after that. I know just the place."

She liked this safe-house, a nice apartment in a normal, middle-class neighbourhood. It wasn't what people thought of when they heard the term. She had carefully constructed a second life for it, made sure her neighbours knew she was a businesswoman, often out of town, but otherwise friendly and moreover _harmless. _

She acquiesced.

She parked in the alley and took him home. Or as near to 'home' as was strictly necessary.

In her well-lit living room, she got her first good look at her temporary partner and briefly considered bringing up her guy at the hospital again. Although half of his face was hidden again behind messy strands of hair, he looked oddly pale under the bruises. Some sprinkles of blood soiled the front of his shirt, from Corvis or from the fight afterward. The suit jacket had torn at some point.

"Fix yourself a drink, if you like," she told him. "I'll get your money."

She left him in the living room, heard nothing for a moment and then the low chittering of glass.

When she came back, he had glass in his hand, generously filled with something clear, although in all probability not water. He had taken off the jacket and leaned on the back of the couch. He seemed to be momentarily unaware of her return, as he put his head back and closed his eyes as he drank.

"You realise you're still trusting me with the rest of your payment," she pointed out and he glanced over his shoulder at her.

"You don't really live here," he said. "But you like this place."

"Yes," she confirmed, walked around the couch to face him. "And I'll leave it behind without a second thought. But not for just ten thousand dollars."

She held out the bundles of banknotes. It wasn't a very neat stack. This money had passed through countless hands already and if their serial numbers were registered anywhere, everyone had long since forgotten all about it.

"Count it," she invited him, but he just took the money with his left hand and fiddled it into the pocket of the jacket by his side, barely looking at it. He took another sip. This close, she could tell it was vodka.

She had two options, then. She could reach out and brush those strands of hair from his face, they had been vexing her all the time. She could cup his face and kiss him. Kiss him hard, taste him, take him, just to see if there was anything he _wasn't _good at.

Or, she could do the more intelligent thing, more satisfying for both of them, too, in the long run.

"Look at the world," she said after a moment. "It's wide open."

He answered with a curious tilt of his head, waiting. The money, the alcohol, the fight, the _kill_ had left a hard glint in his eyes. Of course he knew what she was saying, he wasn't slow and stupid enough not to, but he didn't say it.

"Let me spell it out, then. I prefer to work alone. And I can tell, you'll be better off on your own as well, but sometimes a contract has other requirements. I could kick some jobs your way." She spread out her hands, "Other times, maybe I'll need some more help. You have some useful talents."

"You think I should be a Fixer."

"It's just terminology," she dismissed it with another gesture of her hand. "Call it anything you like. It pays well, if you know how to play your cards right. And it means you won't have to make so nice with the gangs and the mob. Make your own rules, like they do."

A slow frown settled on his face, made him look unexpectedly uncertain, something like lingering innocence despite everything. Like this might be, after all, too large for him to comprehend. She wouldn't hold his hand through it. She shrugged slightly and stepped away, walked over to the table and the notepad there.

"You can call me," she said, writing. "Once you've set up your account and I'll transfer the rest of the money."

She tore the page free and walked back to him. "As for the rest…"

"What sorts of jobs?" he asked. His gaze rested on the paper in her hand as if he considered refusing it despite everything it had taken to get this far.

"Whatever is required," she said and added with a wan smile, "Admittedly, today was… _finicky. _Most jobs aren't as high profile, nor as well paid. Of course, most of them aren't legal. _All _of them, in fact. That's the point. I don't really think you care."

When he still didn't move, she waved the note and said, "Well?"

He downed the vodka, then held out the glass to her. She took the glass and he finally snatched the note from her hand. He glanced over it, then stuffed it into his pocket. He considered her for another moment, looking for something else to say perhaps and coming up blank. What _did _you say at the end of your very first Fixer contract? An hour after your first kill? And in the light of his llife — the parts she knew and those she didn't — was it a monumental step, something life-changing? Or was it just the natural progression of events. He _had, _after all, put himself in exactly the place he found himself in, from the first moment he had brushed her off in the Dogtown.

The moment passed, leaving no visible traces. She stepped back, gave him space, and he picked up his torn jacket, slung it carelessly over his shoulder. He forced himself into a straight posture, no broken or cracked rips, then, as she had originally guessed. Just a little worse for wear, but nothing sheer stubbornness wouldn't overcome.

"Are you good with the car?" she asked, stopped him briefly on his tracks.

He didn't turn back, "I'm good with the car."

* * *

><p>Leslie wasn't the type of girl who'd needle him pointlessly for details. It didn't much matter to her that he'd been in the Dead Men, nor that he'd left them behind. She didn't care he helped his boss move stolen goods rather than just babysit people at the computers. She knew he'd been hired by a Fixer and if she wanted to know more than that, she didn't ask.<p>

She was, however, somewhat bothered by his beaten up state and refused for two entire days to be talked out of a visit to the doctor. After that, she kind of seemed to give up, but he got a very concerned call from Nicky instead, who _really _shouldn't have known anything out of the ordinary had happened. Because all the things Leslie knew, Nicky didn't and didn't need to and _shouldn't. _She'd look at him differently. Everything would change and he wasn't sure if he could face that.

He'd rebuffed Nicky with some difficulty, talked himself out of a family dinner with Mom and assumed Nicky'd be sulking for a week or so. More than enough to finally get his shit into order. If he wanted to pursue this career — and it was a big _if_ — he needed something better than just a separate account. He needed an entire separate _identity _to cover his tracks, at least if he didn't want the government to start asking difficult questions of where all the money was coming from. He would leave traces in the world, no one could evade that forever and just a quick look at modern computing gave him a good idea where it was going to go. Because of this, all he could do was make sure none of these traces led back to him.

It was, all in all, a bit of a headache.

Leslie left the shower and carried a cloud of sweet-scented steam into the living room with her. He glanced up at her and watched as she walked past and dove into the kitchen cabinet. One of these days he was going to pay her boss a visit and talk about Leslie's work hours, probably with the help of a baseball bat. Consistently understaffed, Leslie was working double shifts as chamber maid in a Parker Square hotel and some weeks, he barely got to _see _her. One more good reason to find some better future career than… well… cold booting computers for people too stupid to do it themselves. Or carry around boxes of fenced goods after the Internet café closed.

Leslie emerged from the kitchen pieces of chocolate in her hand and one between her teeth. Sauntering back to the table, she pointed at it and wagged her eyebrows suggestively. When he grinned back, she walked around the table, leaned over him and they shared a kiss around the chocolate.

Still grinning, she settled one hand on his knee, then slid it up his thigh. "You know, I still have half an hour."

The muscle in his leg twitched under her fingertips. He curled an arm around her waist, but said, "I'm waiting for a call. Tighe is setting me up with a forger."

"So?" she hummed, kissed the edge of his mouth, then trailed small, chocolaty kisses along his jaw until she could bite his earlobe.

"I'm trying to make a good first impression," he said. It didn't exactly stop him from leaning into her and pulling her closer.

"And?"

"I don't want to sound like a sex line?"

She chuckled, _purred, _dragged her teeth back along his jaw, "I don't know, you sound kind of hot."

Sort of aware he was sending mixed signals, Aiden caught her lips and kissed her back, harder than before, no longer softened by the sensual-sweet hints of chocolate.

But he really needed to fix this problem, Tighe had been vague about the forger and Aiden had never been deep enough into this side of the criminal world to have many connections, not enough to get the right people to trust him. He was fairly sure he only had one shot at this.

Leslie laughed around the kiss, slung her arms around his neck and straddled his lap. "I'll throw in a blow-job, too," she smirked.

Someone knocked on the door.

He leaned his head into her shoulder, sighed, "Later?"

Leslie huffed, but began to disentangled herself from him when the knock came again. As she walked to the door, she looked back over her shoulder and said, "You're the only guy I know who'd say 'no' to a blow-job."

"It's not 'no' _forever," _he called after her, but returned to staring at the phone in front of him. If he screwed this one up, no doubt Sonya could set him up with no problem, but he wasn't particularly eager to give her more influence over his life. He depended too much on her already and either she didn't realise it, or she had decided not to use it against him. Yet. He had no illusions what he was to her. She'd burn him in a second if she stood to gain. It was just a question of expediency.

In the hallway, Leslie shrieked in surprise, something crashed and before it had started to filter through to Aiden, Viceroys piled into his living room. One hauled a cursing Leslie along by her ponytail and a bruising grip on her arm. She struggled ineffectively against him, spitting all kinds of dirty words. He recognised the Viceroy holding her from a few days ago and the one right beside him, Sand.

Aiden was on his feet and turned. In the second he had, he recounted all the locations of all possible weapons. The gun, the baseball bat, a goddamn _kitchen knife. _Sonya had been both right _and _wrong when she assumed he hadn't killed before. He could kill, he knew it and he'd take every opportunity to carve these Viceroys up if they gave him half a chance… and then, what? He couldn't kill all of them. Right now, he wouldn't be able to take even one of them down.

He knew well enough when he was outgunned, quite literally — one shoved in his face as a warning before a blow into his stomach knocked the breath from him and doubled him over. Another punch followed, from a different direction, doing a good job of reminding him of all the barely healed bruises and sprains. A hit got him on the side of the head, once, twice and a third, until his brow split.

He stood swaying on his feet, taking the hits and the taunts that accompanied them. Fighting back would only lead to one thing, after all, and if he wanted to get out of this — if he wanted to get _Leslie _out of this, he needed his wits about him.

After a few minutes, the Viceroys were done with him, at least for the time being, and pushed him down to the couch, one Viceroy sitting down far too close by his side. Damn intimidation tactic, like he wouldn't recognise it. Blood was running down the side of his face from a split eyebrow, soiling the couch. He got a good look at his apartment and it seemed like it wasn't _just _him they'd been beating up on.

The Viceroy holding her dragged Leslie with him and pushed her down on a chair, backhanded her when she tried to spring right back up. The Viceroy leered at Aiden, "You have to ride your chick harder, teach her some manners!"

Leslie glared daggers at him, but both Sand and Aiden ignored him, fixing on each other instead.

"Did you think," Sand began, turning in the centre of the living room, gesturing carelessly with the gun. "Did you really think we wouldn't find your ass?"

He had tried not to think of the possibility. It hadn't been terribly likely, he had rarely dealt with Viceroys directly and the Wards wee full of people like him, why would anyone even bother memorising his face?

"I hit up Drago, too," Sand exclaimed. "You know? Leader of the Dead Men Walking? Like, I thought if he's still holding your leash, we'd have a problem with them, but it turns out Drago wants to beat the shit out of you, too. Turns out, mine isn't the only business you've ruined. I almost gave Drago a shot at you, but then I _remembered _just how _fucking much your stupid faggot ass COST me_!"

Sand finished by leaning down over Aiden, staring at him from wide eyes, teeth bared in a grin barely this side of maniacal, close enough that tiny drops of spittle hit him in the face.

"What do you think, Irish boy? Is this going to have a happy ending?"

Aiden resisted wiping his face, blood and spit, but he did hold Sand's gaze. "There's something you'll want more than me," he said, quietly, with as much composure as he could muster.

"Your girl!" a Viceroy shouted to cheers from the others.

"Fuck you," Leslie spat, but had enough sense to stay put this time.

Sand didn't pay any attention to the momentary distraction. He took a small step back and shoved the gun into Aiden's face, muzzle to his forehead and Aiden found he couldn't quite suppress the involuntary shudder going through him. He didn't think he had ever gambled with stakes this high.

"How's that?" Sand demanded. "Because _your brains splattered all over the place_ sounds like a fucking brilliant idea to me."

It was hard not to squint with the gun right between his eyes, hard to _think _with the deadly metal so close. His eyebrow throbbed and for some reason it bothered him more than anything else. Never get those stains out…

He forced the muscles in his jaw to relax, unhooking the bones there just so nothing broke when he said, "What about the Fixer?"

His voice picked up strength as he spoke, because he noticed the Viceroys, or at least Sand, were actually _listening. _"I'm small fry," Aiden added. "Everyone knows that. Just trying to earn some cash. _She_'s the one who fucked you over. Wouldn't it be more…" he lost the breath for moment, voice cutting out. He swallowed dryly. Continued, "… more satisfying if you scattered _her _brains everywhere?"

Sand tilted his head to the side, eyes narrowing, the gun stayed where it was and Aiden could see the finger on the trigger didn't relax. Sand was still grinning, "We thought of that, but you… well, you were Dead Men Walking, you're almost one of us. This is _personal_. Besides, that bitch's a large-scale Fixer. They sure as hell know how to cover their tracks. Not like you, little white boy."

"I can find her," Aiden insisted.

The frown dug deeper into Sand's expression and the hunger was there. But Sand still hesitated. Stopping now would be too close to going back on his word and he wasn't running a crew if he was easily swayed, he wouldn't have been trusted with Corvis either. Sand needed to finish this, just to salvage his own reputation. He couldn't be seen being talked out of anything. But Aiden didn't think Sand was stupid, not this kind of stupid. He _had to _know that Sonya was the juicier prize, getting to her would do a much better job at redeeming him.

"I can get to her," Aiden said.

It was just a question of expediency.

* * *

><p><em>End of _Dogtown Part 3<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> For some reason, it cracks me up that Aiden isn't supposed to be drinking vodka without parentel consent.

What annoys me is the following problem: Sex was scheduled. I could even have managed to give me a female POV this time, but _no, _as per usual, sex turns out to be the less interesting thing to do. (No wonder that Aiden/Poppy thing I'm writing _still _doesn't have a plot and turns cracky every other paragraph...)

In this case, it's also a question of characterisation. Sonya isn't going to ruin a promising business partnership and I don't think Aiden is the type who would cheat on his girlfriend.

So there. Earning my rating labels purely through clumsily written violence. Enough bad porn in fanfic, anyway.


	10. Dogtown - Part 4

**Note/Warning: **I'm so glad this is done. Multi-parts are so stressful. I hope you enjoy!

It feels like this part is **a bit more explicit** than previous installments, but I don't think it's too bad. However, as per usual, reader discretion advised.

* * *

><p><strong>_Dogtown Part 4<strong>

* * *

><p>It was a good, wealthy neighbourhood, elegant houses set back from the street by well-tended gardens, fenced in to prevent an easy view on the premises, remotely operated gates. It was quiet, late at night, this wasn't a neighbourhood that needed regular police patrols, not least because some of the larger houses no doubt had their own security and they <em>all <em>had some kind of alarm system.

It was still warm from the day, but Aiden had barely slept in two days and he felt high-strung and tense, both cold and almost feverish, as he watched the house from across the street. A discreet metal plate set into the pillar at the gate said: _Raffaela Benelli. Consultant. By appointment only. _He wasn't sure if it was a cover, or her day-job, or perhaps it was just how you said 'Fixer' in polite company. She had been easier to track than he had expected, much to his relief, because the Viceroys weren't leaving him be and he wasn't at his best with some guy constantly breathing down his neck.

He'd _had _the advantage of Sonya actually _wanting _to get back in touch with him, he knew the location of one her safe-houses and all he needed to do was pick her up at any place and follow her home. _Home_ was this and she was theretonight.

At least the Viceroys knew how to take orders if he phrased them with small enough words. They'd parked well out of sight so as not to alert anyone in the neighbourhood, picked the darker paths to bring them to his side and close around him like a school of sharks. Sand slung an arm around his shoulders in a kind of disrespectful camaraderie. It made Aiden itch to grip his arm and twist it from its socket.

Instead, he clenched his teeth and let it happen.

He had entertained the possibility of tipping Sonya off, giving her some kind of warning, but he didn't know how it would help. Even if he somehow managed to slip out of Sand's grasp, he'd just end up as target of whoever took over. He couldn't wage a war on all of the Black Viceroys and this was simply too big — and too embarrassing — to let go for them. They' d have to take much more damage than he was able to inflict to make them drop it.

The only way he could think of was to leave. Leave for _good. _And his mother and Nicky, Leslie, the guys, they'd all be exposed to some kind of retaliation if he did that. All it took to protect them, all of them, was giving them one woman's life. She was someone with a body count, but the thought didn't sit right with him either. _Could _he justify doing this at all? He'd played and he'd lost, should've been more careful…

"You surprised me," Sand remarked into his line of thoughts. "I really thought you were bullshitting us."

Aiden swallowed, forced his voice to sound neutral. "What happens next?"

"Next?" Sand repeated, grinning. "It's called a home invasion."

But then, if anyone should've been careful, it was Sonya — _Raffaela_ — she should know what and who she was dealing with.

"Sound familiar?" another Viceroy asked and laughed at his own cleverness.

Aiden ignored him. Sand said, "And unless _she'_s willing to trade on Quinn himself, hers won't go as smoothly as yours."

Not like they could move on Quinn or the Club. Chicago's underworld was more or less cleanly divided in a mutually assured destruction sort of way. Sure, some border disputes happened and every party would seize an opportunity, but no one wanted an all-out war between Black Viceroys and Chicago South Club, Viceroys and Club least of all.

Sand gave him a shove, not as hard as it could have been, but still enough to make a point. Aiden started walking and finally Sand let him go.

By the gate, Aiden stopped and pulled a remote from his pocket, flipped the switch and the gate opened smoothly.

"Not bad," he heard one of the Viceroy's comment from behind him. It hadn't been too hard. He'd called the company who manufactured the gates, pretended to be one of their techs and got them to tell him the frequency for their remotes. Easy. He hadn't fared as well with the company who had installed and maintained the alarm system. They didn't really have much of a web-presence and his calls had been rebuffed with professional ease. So when he led the group of Viceroys around the house and to the fuze box, he wasn't actually sure if the burglar alarm wasn't on its own grid and wouldn't shut down when they cut the power.

Aiden broke open the fuze box and one of the Viceroys held a flashlight over his shoulder. He found the wires and cut them. It wasn't very spectacular, almost the same darkness as before.

Passing the house before, there had been light from just one window and it had been faint. A desk lamp and a laptop screen, Sonya was still working it seemed. Perhaps she hadn't switched the alarm on already.

Sand and the Viceroys swarmed the house. It's large windows and ground floor doors offered barely any resistance as they pried everything open, getting inside from different directions.

Aiden hung back, trailed after them only reluctantly, but he saw Sonya get up from her desk, lit only by the laptop in front of her. She had to stand still for a moment, before her eyes adapted, but the Viceroys were making a racket in her house, more than enough to tip her off. She went for her desk drawer, tore it open and pulled out a gun, got it up and around just before the first Viceroy was on her. She managed to duck away from his first punch, but collided with another, couldn't get the gun up.

A Viceroy got hold of her bathrobe, yanked at it and ruined her balance. He kicked her legs away from under her and she fell onto her back. She slipped down, trying to get out of the bathrobe, get the gun up. She got a kick in the stomach and couldn't help curl in on herself, groaning.

A Viceroy wrestled her arm to the floor and Sand stepped down on her wrist, hard-heeled boot and the distinctive sound of cracking bone mixed with her choked yelp. Sand kicked the gun away, though she wouldn't have been able to use that hand again anyway.

Sonya seemed momentarily stunned. The Viceroys dragged her up and manhandled her to a wooden beam that held up the high-ceilinged room, pulled her arms up and together behind the beam, snapped a pair of handcuffs on her.

Aiden still stood just inside the room, he heard other Viceroys ransacking the living room behind him, their flashlights cutting through the darkness arbitrarily. Vaguely, Aiden thought they made too much noise. The neighbours were fairly distant, but it was a very quiet area and the large windows would advertise their flashlights to everyone who looked in their direction. Maybe someone would call the cops. Aiden didn't know what he thought about it, but he sure as hell wasn't going to warn them.

"Now," Sand said, facing Sonya. She had gone still, face set in a stark mask, meeting Sand's gaze without flinching, despite how pale she had become, fending off the pain from her broken wrist. "Are you surprised to see us?" Sand grinned.

Sonya said nothing.

"Hey, Sand," a Viceroy grinned. "She's kind of hot."

Sand snapped his head around, glared at the speaker. "Yes, but let's have some discipline. What _will _she think of us, otherwise?"

It was nothing but powerplay, of course, Sand's personal schtick to make sure his crew remembered he was charge, able to instil random rules when it pleased him. They hadn't minded at all threatening Leslie with rape, though it had clearly been meant as humiliation for Aiden, no something they'd have gone through with it. Aiden hadn't been doing a very good job at explaining that to Leslie, however.

Sonya just waited, let Sand talk and insult and play up her fate to his heart's content. Sand gripped Sonya's jaw, pulled it up.

"Wait," Aiden said and finally stepped forward. Sand dropped Sonya's face and looked over his shoulder. Sonya's gaze left Sand only slowly, as if it took effort to fix on anything else. She seemed to go even more still when she saw Aiden, as if something had settled. In a way, it probably had, because the Viceroys' presence in her house had gone from barely explainable to making perfect sense.

Sand gave him a warning frown. "What?"

"I'm sure she has a safe in the house," Aiden said. "Weapons. Maybe they'll help. You lost money on this, didn't you?"

Sand kept looking at Aiden, but reached up and around Sonya. Aiden't couldn't see but he didn't have to, because Sand pulled hard on Sonya's broken wrist and she winced quietly, put her head hard back into the pillar, but kept her composure.

"She won't tell," Sand explained as if he was talking to an idiot. "Fixers, you know? Tough as nails. Even if she's a hot chick."

"Can I try?" Aiden asked, he didn't quite trust his voice, but it was quiet enough and faint enough for Sand to interpret it any way he could and wanted. It was less about what Aiden was going to do, but what Sand _imagined _he would do and whether he agreed or not. Half the time, people just manipulated themselves, looking for confirmation of their own views.

Sand pulled his brows up and shrugged. "Why not?"

He made a wide gesture with hands. "Come on guys, lets give the white boy a little privacy."

The Viceroys filed from the room, left one flashlight behind on a low table off the side of the desk.

Aiden stepped around it's cone carefully, looked at Sonya for a long moment and pulled out the chair from the desk to sit down. The light was too for down to hit Sonya's face, it strove past her, across her chest and over her raised elbow by her ear. For a moment, Aiden thought she was going to say something to him, but she didn't. He could tell she was looking at him, but he couldn't see her expression.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She shifted a little and barely that, but at least she was listening.

"I can't protect you," he continued.

"You trust your new friends?" she asked. "You really think they'll accept this deal you've made over my life? Because that's what it is, isn't it? What you did? Sold me to them to save your own skin."

"What did you think I'd do?"

"Make the right call," she said, raising her voice just a little, anger slowly seeping into her apathy. "Get on the right track. Bending over for the Viceroys won't help you. They'll just kill you later."

"Maybe not," Aiden said and something close to humour almost locked down his throat. "I think they actually like me."

She was silent again, but Aiden didn't have a good grasp on time, he didn't know how long it was or long he even had. He heard the Viceroys outside, it sounded like they were having fun. It was a strange contrast.

"It's weird," Sonya said, more to herself than him. "I've never been dead before. It doesn't feel like it should."

"Will you give me the safe code?" Aiden asked.

"Why?" she asked back, voice barely a whisper anymore.

"Because I have no idea what Sand and the others are up to, but I don't think I want to watch."

She laughed, dryly and a little lost and the edge of something more. Slowly, she slid down the pillar, low chittering of the handcuffs and a brief, sharply indrawn breath from the pain. She passed through the cone of light, briefly revealing the mirth on her face.

"A mercy killing for the contents of my safe?"

It confused him that she didn't try to drive a harder bargain. She didn't scream at him, or mock, or accuse. All she gave him was this parchment humour. He had just sold her out, after everything she had done, after everything she was still offering him. Instead, she was preternaturally calm. It was an echo of Corvis, even, though Corvis had still tried to weasel out of things, but in hindsight, the way Corvis had accepted his end, perhaps he'd never truly believed it, either. It wasn't the kind of dying Aiden had ever witnessed. He'd seen guys beaten to a bloody pulp in some dirty back alley, he'd seen them weep and beg and piss themselves. He'd gotten in a punch and kick himself a few times, too. Better to be the one doing it than be on the ground.

This composure was something he didn't understand.

"It's not a bad deal," he said.

She was in her underwear under the bathrobe, smoothly muscled legs outlined by the flashlight now. He'd seen her fight only briefly — he hadn't had time to watch her when things had gone south after Corvis — but it was an easy bet to think she would've been a tough oppoenet even for all the Viceroys without the element of surprise. Perhaps if he had…

"9-6-2-6-8-4," she said, same toneless expression she'd had throughout their entire conversation. A tiny smile was in it, too, when she added, "It's a random number. Safer that way."

She laughed a little, "Turns out, I was looking the wrong way after all."

It took a long time for him to remember he had to act now, she had given him what he wanted, there was no reason to stick around. He got up and walked to the door. It wasn't even completely closed and he gave it a slight shove with the tip of his shoe.

He called out and when he felt Sand's attention on him, he dictated them the number and watched from the doorway as the Viceroys got up from where they sprawled around on the expensive leather furniture or raiding Sonya's liquor cabinet. Others seemed to be busy elsewhere in the house, painted white light revealed them, cajoling as they went.

Sand went to work on the safe. It was only faint relief to learn that Sonya had given him the right combination. She could just as easily have played him for a fool. Aiden would've done it, in her place.

He didn't stand around and watch them. He caught them pull out wads of cash, the biggest prize for them, but he also saw what appeared to be a pile of passports. There was even a _gold-bar. _

Aiden walked back into the room, leaving the door. He picked up speed as he went, strength back in his limbs after he'd felt so numb. Not enough sleep, he guessed. He crouched down by Sonya's side and pulled the belt of her bathrobe free and tried it in his hand. Silk, more than strong enough.

He threaded the belt around her throat, past her arms and back around the pillar. He wasn't sure if she just allowed herself be rearranged by him, or whether it was the beginning of a struggle. He wrapped the ends of the belt around his hands and hesitated. He expected her to say something. Some last words, a last revelation. Maybe an echo of what Corvis had told him. _This is how it ends, boy, pay attention, you'll get here eventually. _

Sonya hit her head back, against the pillar, taking… No, _Raffaela _hit her head back, against the pillar, taking a deep breath, steeling herself.

Aiden pulled the belt tight. It wasn't much of a mercy, choking someone to death took time, but it was the best he had to offer without a gun and he wasn't going to ask Sand to return his.

The silk cut into his hand in the same way it cut into the flesh of her throat. The struggle began, beyond her control now, yanking on her arms, kicking out with her legs uselessly. She made low, gargling noises, all that managed to slip past her closed throat. Aiden settled one leg against the pillar for leverage and pulled harder.

Raffaela's body pulled against her bounds, desperately, gasping for air she wasn't getting, gagging and pounding her head against the pillar. Her twitching hand caught the edge of his head and he snapped away in shock, letting the silk slip for a second. He retaliated, anger and frustration fuelling him, until the muscles in his arms burned from the strain, all the way into his shoulder blades and up along the tendons of his neck. It settled as a dull throbbing behind his eyes.

Gradually, Raffaela's body lost its strength, the gargling died down, became slow, almost rhythmic, like a spasm of something else entirely. He didn't let up, she was unconscious, not dead at all, but the silence of it was still eerie. What silence there was, anyway, with the Viceroys still running loose in the house.

It seemed no one had called the cops. It seemed the burglar alarm hadn't been switched on, or else wasn't on it's own grid. So many things could've gone wrong tonight, but somehow they hadn't.

"_Would _you look at _that_?" Sand asked from the open door. "Enjoying yourself there?"

Aiden had to wet his lips before he trusted himself to speak, but it was barely a second. "Can you check her pulse?" he asked. "My arms are falling asleep."

"At your command," Sand mocked, walked over and crouched down by Raffaela's side. "She's well done."

Aiden managed to relax only by increment, more effort than it seemed to hold the tension. His fingers ached when blood suddenly returned into them. He massaged them, but barely paid attention.

"And now?" Aiden asked.

"Well," Sand wagged his head from side to side. "Looks like her part in the evening entertainment's gone all to hell, we'll settle with what we get. Found her gun stores, they're _massive. _Lot's of dead presidents, too. _Not _as much as we would've made if you hadn't fucked with us."

Aiden said nothing, but met Sand's gaze across Raffaela's limp body. "That's not what I mean," he said roughly.

Sand pretended to be surprised, "Oh, I get it. Yeah, we're done. Got yourself out of this one, but don't be so sure there'll be another time."

He gestured with both hands. "Keep your head down, Irish boy. You aren't gonna always having someone to trade."

Aiden stayed on the floor behind Raffaela, listened to the Viceroys as they raided the rest of the house. He handed over the gate remote when one of them asked for it and he was still there when the Viceroys left and finally the silence was actually real, even the one in his head.

After a time, the change in light caught and held his attention and he looked up. The screensaver had come on on Raffaela's laptop, abstract lines painting over the screen in random patterns, then erasing themselves.

Aiden pulled back to his feet, drawn to the computer before he realised what was happening. He touched the mouse and the screensaver quit, revealing what Raffaela had been working on. It seemed to be a programme for managing contacts. At first glance, he only spotted initials, maybe it was even coded, but there was something there he could use.

Behind him, Raffaela's dead eyes were watching, bloodshot and bulging from her red-and-blue face, disfigured almost beyond recognition. He didn't look at her. Not when he snapped the laptop closed and furled up its power cord, nor when he picked up the notebook from beside the desk or when he found the gun she'd tried to use earlier.

He found another safe in the bedroom, but if she used random numbers as combination, he had no chance to crack it. He couldn't have guessed it, anyway, he hadn't known her well enough for that. There was a box of jewellery in the bathroom, most of it looked genuine in the flashlight, he could pawn it for some additional cash. He didn't think he'd be getting paid what he still owed for Corvis.

He made a last round through the house, wiping down every surface he might have touched. He'd been careful and he didn't have a record, but he wasn't comfortable leaving anything to chance. Eventually, he _would _have a record, no need for this to come back in ten years time and ruin his day.

Other than making a mess and taking what guns and cash they had found, the Viceroys hadn't done much to the house. It looked like just any other burglary gone wrong, if you squinted. It lacked all the hallmarks of a gang hit. He supposed there was a reason for it, perhaps still hoping to keep things on the down low with the Club, or perhaps Sand wanted to avoid a future meeting with some of Raffaela's friends.

One last time, he stepped in front of Raffaela and this time he looked at her, met her empty gaze and her bloodshot expression, tongue lolling out at the edge of her open mouth. After a moment's pause, he picked up the belt he'd used to strangle her and took it with him. He'd burn it later, just to be sure.

Killing Sonya had been necessary. He couldn't have won this hand, otherwise. He wasn't even sure he _had _won, but at least he was still in one piece. It was just a question of expediency, but _this_ — all of it — it wasn't how he had pictured it.

_I'm sorry, _he thought, but there was no point in saying it aloud. No one who mattered was there to hear it.

He wandered down the driveway, found the gate open and the street just as empty as it had been when he'd arrived with the Viceroys.

* * *

><p>Aiden sat at his regular table in the Dogtown. He had Sonya's laptop closed by his side, its power cord leading under the table and through the café to where it was plugged in behind the counter. There was not enough traffic back here to worry about someone tripping and Mal was okay with it.<p>

Not everything he found in Sonya's files was useful, almost all of it was in some kind of code. He could make sense of some of it, understand the broad strokes of what she had been doing and, more importantly, for whom and at what price. Something he could work with, though, and a better starting point than nothing.

In the weeks following Sonya's death his life had been trying to return to it's daily grind. His mother still bugged him about possible college scholarships, Nicky's boyfriend still hated him, his friends still had no idea what good beer was. Leslie had moved out, it was a gradual breakup and not the first they'd had in the two years since he'd known her, but he had a feeling this one was going to last. Leslie had always professed she didn't care about his criminal involvement, but he supposed the reality of it wasn't nearly as romantic as her fantasy had been. He couldn't blame her for that, really.

On the table in front of him was the newspaper he had been reading over breakfast. His coffee cup had left damp circles along the edge of it, smudging the picture of a pitiful looking Sand in handcuffs being led away by uniformed cops. Even in the grainy picture, the wider scene was clear. The cops had moved in force and taken down an entire crew of Viceroys. According to the article, they had received an anonymous tip and caught the Viceroys in the act. It was a watertight case, according to the article. Sand was going down for this one.

Aiden settled back in his seat, watched the parking lot outside the window, the people there. Maybe he should have waited a little longer before pulling anything on Sand, some of his Viceroy friends could make the link from Corvis to Sonya to Aiden, but none of it would matter if Aiden was careful enough, watched his back and didn't hesitate to shoot first. He'd need resources for that, allies or at least people outside the Wards, he needed _connections. _

He flipped open the laptop, went through Sonya's contacts, memorised the number he'd come across earlier.

"Hey, Mal, watch my stuff, I gotta make a call," Aiden called before he left the Dogtown.

There was a pay-phone across the parking lot, a sorry looking thing, smeared with garish paint and dog-shit, functional only if you knew where to hit it beforehand.

It rang for a long time.

_"Yes?"_

"I'm calling because of a mutual acquaintance," Aiden said. "You've hired a Fixer called Raffaela Benelli. Unfortunately, she won't be able to fulfil her end of the deal."

_"What? What happened?" _

"She had an accident," Aiden said, but he supposed the meaning of 'accident' was different in his circles. "And I know you've been left hanging. I'd be willing to take over. After all, your problem won't fix itself."

What the man _needed _wasn't difficult to provide. He was an engineer, looking to cash in on some of his work outside the company that paid his salary. All _he _needed was someone to talk him through it, make sure he didn't lose his nerve, maybe have a car ready and set up a meeting with potential buyers. Using Sonya's network, it wouldn't be hard to do, even if Aiden couldn't convince all of them to work with him. An easy job, all things considered. A good way to flex his muscles in the field.

_"No, it won't. Damn, okay. I agreed on the price with Ms. Benelli, I've already paid half of it…" _

"No problem, you just give me the rest upon completion."

Despite himself, despite what had happened, Aiden smiled a little. He felt like he was finally getting on the right track. Inwardly, he'd been laughing at Sonya's suggestion of becoming a Fixer, it had seemed like a ridiculous idea at the time, but now? Now he thought it might not be a half bad idea.

"We should meet and discuss the details. Do you know the Dogtown Café?"

* * *

><p><em>End of _Dogtown<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Referencing: <strong>The gold-bar owes it's existence to the song Running Man by Al Stewart. It's probably vain or something, but I've managed to reference my own story (Nothing Left to Prove).

**Author's Note: **I've seen a lot (for a given amout of 'lot') mentions of how Aiden's hard to write. He isn't. Here's a tip: During the end-credits newsflash, Yolanda gives us this: "This is a very smart man looking to gain the upper hand in every situation." It's not _all, _but it's a good yardstick when determining his actions and reactions. (even if Yolanda really shouldn't have any idea what she's talking about, she's been face to face with him for barely three minutes.)

As for Dogtown, Aiden's mental state is all over the place. That's intentional. He doesn't have it all sorted out yet, after all.


	11. Quaint Old World: The Good Life

**Author's Note: **I've completely forgotten I've actually finished this one… You might as well have it. Enjoy.

Btw, I don't actually _know _why my stories sometimes switch between present and past tense. Some scenes just demand to be written a certain way. It switches halfway through the story for no reason I can consciously determine. But it _needs _to be this way, otherwise it just doesn't sound right.

* * *

><p>[this takes place in 2038, about a year after the events of Quaint Old World]<p>

**_Quaint Old World: The Good Life**

* * *

><p>It isn't the first time he's stared down the barrel of a gun. He's seen the moment preceding it, known it would happen maybe even before Ellis has made the decision himself. By chance, rather than skill or experience, Ellis stands too far away for him to intervene before he can raise the gun. The wide bulk of an old conference table is between them. Too many decades ago to think, Aiden might have attempted to act. He could have leapt that table and kicked the gun from Ellis' fingers before it became a true threat. But even at the height of his training, it would have been a risky move.<p>

Now, the mere thought of it leaves bitter-tasting amusement on his tongue as he contemplates the embarrassment of trying such a thing. He leans back instead and the rickety office chair creaks with the move, sends uncomfortable echoes through the large basement room and makes the assorted members of DedSec Underground shuffle in place, agitation thick in the air.

The gun isn't steady in Ellis' hand, he's shivering ever so slightly and his whole body seems ready to snap. You can never outmanoeuvre a bullet, it doesn't have the necessary pressure points, only the gunman does.

From his seat down the length of the table, very quietly, Jackson says, "Ellis, don't. I asked him to come."

Ellis glances at Jackson, but doesn't dare take his eyes off Aiden, who's looking back at him calmly, an image of boredom and it sets Ellis' teeth on edge even more. It's Jackson he speaks to when Ellis says, "Who the fuck is he? I told you not to bring any strangers! It's too dangerous."

"He wrote the Perception app," Jackson said. Aiden keeps his gaze locked on Ellis, on the gleaming black gun and the way Ellis' expression is oscillating between fear and determination.

Technically, Aiden wrote a very buggy alpha build of Perception. Enough to trick some of ctOS' low-key features, altering the search pattern of their cameras and thus leaving blind spots to squeeze through. The app's current iteration, with its far more advanced features was T-Bone's work. Hastily and brilliantly put together in a corner of the homeless shelter he inhabited.

But Ellis doesn't know that and he won't. Aiden senses the surprise washing through the audience, ever so slightly altering the moment. Ellis is their leader, but not by merit of charisma or qualification. He is the leader because no one else has stepped up to the plate, because he's the only one with the bravado to pull a gun and hold it to a man's face.

Jackson hesitates, Aiden feels the questioning gaze, but he prefers not to look back. He's seen the way Ellis is getting more nervous with every second that passes. By now, he must have realised just how heavy a loaded gun can become on the end of an outstretched arm.

Jackson reaches a decision, but he isn't sure of it, doesn't know if Aiden approves or if it'd help. He says it anyway, "He's Aiden Pearce. He can help."

There is another silence after this, heavier than the first. Ellis seems shellshocked for no more than a second, than grates out a laugh. It isn't a very good one, it doesn't mask his insecurity at all.

"Pearce is an urban myth. He was never real."

"He's my uncle," Jackson says as if it constitutes some kind of valid argument. It's touching to hear it, because Jackson really believes it, really believes in some version of his uncle, Aiden has never quite figured out. Why _is _he here? Why has he chased down T-Bone and risked to tear the man's carefully constructed cover into tiny pieces. All of it, only so he can give it to these _children _playing at being revolutionaries?

Ellis waves the gun around to emphasis his words. In another time, it would have been an opening to use, but here and now, it's just aggravating to watch.

"Is that it?" Ellis demands of Aiden. "Can you _help us_?" Scorn is thick in his tone. He knows he's slipping, he's pulled the gun and now he's left without a script. He doesn't know how to put it away without seeming weak. It's never a good place for someone to be, they snap too easily.

Aiden shifts a little, just enough, the beginning of a movement quickly aborted. Ellis takes a step closer to the table.

It's easy to find that icy calm again, too easy perhaps after so many years, but it's there and Aiden can tell Ellis doesn't like the look of it. Aiden says, "What are you planning?"

"Like I'd tell you! Jacks could have sold us out! For all I know you're working for Blume!"

"You know who I am, Jacks told you," Aiden points out reasonably. He puts his chin forward, indicates the crates full of guns at the back of the room. There may be more he hasn't seen. "Let's see what we have," Aiden continues. "You've amassed guns and you've got Perception. For the first time in over twenty years, you can move freely through the city. Not just Chicago, but anywhere they use ctOS. You're going to recruit and then you're going to wage the war DedSec's always promised and never delivered. And you think you can actually pull it off."

He pauses, arches a condescending brow at the young man. "How am I doing so far?"

"That's not all!" Ellis announces, clearly trying to convince himself and his people rather than the sneering old man he's threatening with a gun.

Aiden leans forward, puts a hand on the table in front of him, shoves himself a little further back, getting some small distance between himself and the table. "You'd better hope that's not all, because you don't get it. Because, I don't know what games you're playing in your free time, but this isn't going to be won with a few guns. It's not the middle ages. You can't lay siege to Blume with a bunch of heretics. They'll crush you and then they'll spin a few good headlines. One assault, even if it's successful, which I doubt, won't mean _shit_. Blume's a vast multi-national with fingers in every government in the world. Do you think _any _decision is made that's not approved by Blume? Just two years ago they send us to war, remember?"

Wide-eyed now, Ellis passes the gun briefly to his left hand, wipes the right on his shirt. "That's China!" he says. "China invaded Africa and we're _helping_ them."

Aiden doesn't laugh, it's too sad to. "And look at you, buying right into the propaganda. Blume wants the resources and that's what Blume'll get."

"I'm not!" Ellis snaps. "It's going to work! Blume's got a headquarters here! We'll get in, and we'll connect to their network and then we can shut it all down!"

This time, Aiden _does _laugh. It sounds ugly and grating even for him, but it does the job, it brings Ellis all the way around the table. He plants himself right in front of Aiden, presses the gun to his forehead so hard he nearly manages to cover the trembling of his hand.

"Ellis," Jackson calls. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"He's talking bullshit!" Ellis snaps, looks up and past Aiden's shoulder at Jackson. "What does he know anyway! It's a good…"

… _plan. _He was going to say 'plan' and there are not enough alternate universes to make it true. At any rate, Aiden has him where he needs him and there's no point in waiting any longer, no sure way to know the moment will last at all.

No sure way to know it'll _work, _either, but part of him is morbidly curious if that damn bullet with his name on will ever come to collect at all. Aiden moves and he remembers how to do it, how to snatch one arm up and wrap fingers around the gun, how to _hold _and _twist _and _turn _until Ellis loses the grip on the gun with a pained yelp. Aiden springs from the chair with a speed he knows he'll regret later. He steps into Ellis' leg, makes him stagger and topple even as Aiden brings his other hand up Ellis' neck to grab the back of his head.

Ellis remembers how to struggle, but Aiden holds on, searing muscles and aching joints through a moment when he's not sure his body will last. It forces a snarl past his lips, and nothing else. Ellis uses the moment to kick out ineffectively and then Aiden slams him down on the table, face first, not hard enough to do any true damage, but enough to leave blood running from his nose and pool on the table.

Aiden pulls him back by the neck, stares him down and Ellis only tries to twitch away. He _could_ get away, break the hold. Aiden knows it, but Ellis can't see it. He has the strength to, but not the willpower.

"You know what else I know?" Aiden asks him. It's barely a whisper, but Ellis is close enough. "If _I _can do this, what do you think Blume Corporate Police is going to do with you?"

He gives Ellis a shove, but he's seen the anger in the younger man's face, the wounded pride and the dumb animal instinct it brought to the fore. Ellis will try him again, but he doesn't know how to do it, his eyes give him away and when he lunges for the gun again, Aiden's faster and he's done playing, done _arguing. _

He twists Ellis arm before it can get to the weapon and slams the hand down flat on the table. He picks up the gun, spins it easily in his hand before he can think about how stiff his fingers are, puts the muzzle to Ellis' hand.

Ellis whimpers, trying to pull away and although pain shoots up Aiden's arm, he shows nothing of it, doesn't loosen his grip, doesn't even flinch.

He pulls the trigger.

The gun clicks emptily and Ellis shrieks and then goes limp in his grip as the tension breaks all at once, half toppling over the table before he can catch himself with his free hand. He looks up at Aiden, lips quivering and eyes wide. There is something he wants to say, but no words come.

Aiden eases up on his hold, pulls the gun's magazine from his sleeve and slams it on the table. He steps away after that, gets clear in case Ellis has the guts to come at him again, but it'll be another minute until Ellis has found his bearing. For now, he's leaning on the table, breathing like he's ran a marathon, fingers still spread as if Aiden's still holding him down.

Through it all, it turns out, Jackson hasn't moved at all and his expression doesn't seem to have changed either. His gaze flickers between Aiden and Ellis, then settles on his uncle. He's only here for Jacks, only for him, _everything _only ever for him. Jackson has enough sense to keep himself on the outside of DedSec Underground's inane schemes. But Jackson _wants _this to be true, it's all there is to it.

And it's not enough.

Aiden says, "I'm sorry, Jacks. I can't fix it. Not this time."

* * *

><p>Ellis' revolutionary zeal dogs him through the days.<p>

But the doors are all closed. There is room only for minor things, smoke and mirrors in place of real magic. Enough to keep him safe in the world, enough to hide himself from ctOS. Him and T-Bone and Jackson and all the others he's met through the years who meant anything to him at all.

* * *

><p>He tracks T-Bone to the new homeless shelter he's fled to.<p>

"How do you keep _finding_ me?" T-Bone asks exasperated and grips Aiden's arm, drags him with him before Aiden even has a chance to answer.

"That's the first time I've been crowded into a toilet stall," Aiden says, resting a boot up on the toilet bowl so he can stand halfway comfortably.

T-Bone grimaces, "Makes two of us, buddy. Can't trust Perception, they've upgraded surveillance three weeks ago and it's the only remotely secure place. Legislation still doesn't want any camera in the shit house. Just a question of time, if you ask me. What do you want?"

Aiden is silent. There is no ctOS in here with them, but it's far from private. He can hear the other men milling around outside. "I need your help," he says finally.

"Well, that's good to know," T-Bone mutters. "Because I need yours. I ain't feeling safe here, or anywhere. I'm sure they're onto me… Damn, listen to me, I sound like Frewer. But the point stands, I need an out, a real one, this time."

"I have an idea."

T-Bone grins, quick and unrelenting. "Don't you ever. What's your deal?"

"Just a message I have to send."

T-Bone narrows his eyes. "I got a feeling I'm not going to like it."

* * *

><p>It was a dismal day. It had rained throughout the night, but although it had let up by sunrise, the gravel paths of the graveyard had turned to muddy tracks through sodden marshland. A few wayward rays of sunlight were breaking through an otherwise perfect cloud cover, painting the glistening gravestones and lending the moment what gravitas it could.<p>

A motley group of people stood around a new grave. They were standing a little too far apart, like people do who do not actually know each other well, who had come out of obligation, not the love and the loss normally associated with funerals.

A man in a shabby black suit under his shabby black coat stood a little apart form the others, speaking his eulogy in low, monotonous tones.

_"… I cannot say I knew him well…"_

On a slope, a little away from the new grave and it's peculiar mourners, was a stone bench. On it was a man, outlined against the bleached-pale sky. He had leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and closer inspection would reveal he wasn't looking at the funeral, but at the phone in his hand. An even closer look would reveal it to be an old phone, by several decades. They used to call them _smartphones, _but it was no longer an apt description in any shape or form. But the man was old, too.

Another man came striding up the wet path, walking in long, measured steps. Not young, either, by any stretch of the imagination, but his coat collar was up against the rain and the wind, his hands tucked away in his pockets. There was not enough visible to identify him at a distance, by human eyes alone and for some reason, the ever present surveillance cameras in the area altered their movement pattern and turned a curious circle around the two men, never quite recording their faces for automatic identification.

"Would you listen to that?" the man with the phone said. "Eric and I, we've been talking for _hours. _Drinking, too, playing poker. I thought we were friends."

Aiden seemed amused. "He thought you were a welder, T-Bone."

"Well," T-Bone said. He took his eyes off the phone and looked to the side. "Now he thinks I'm dead."

Aiden remained standing for a long moment, he let his gaze travel around the graveyard, watching the cameras on their tall poles all around. Eventually, he shook back into motion, took the last two steps to the bench and sat down.

"In a few hours, you'll be out of the country," Aiden said. "And Blume will receive the hints they need to find your grave. It's all arranged. It's time you do your part."

T-Bone sighed, stared back into his phone before he gave up the act and leaned back, stared at Aiden on the other end of the bench. "About that… I've been thinking and, Aiden, I don't know."

Turning his head, Aiden fixed him with narrowed eyes. "What's the problem?"

"They'll catch you, man," T-Bone raised his voice, just a little, enough to make his irritation clear. A gust of wind picked up above them, shook the old trees and seemed to scatter the mourners down the hill. The service done, they wandered off in their separate directions. No one lingered even a second.

"They'll put you behind bars or in the ground. I'm not helping you commit suicide."

"And this is better?" Aiden asked, frosty calm in his voice, unmoving but for the wind tucking on his collar. "I tried running and I tried hiding and I'm tired of both. Lately, I'm thinking _let them come_." He paused for a moment. "Let them lose a little sleep over it. Let them doubt."

T-Bone watched him, the personification of skepticism. "Can't say I agree. I get the sentiment, man, but… well, ain't no point if you aren't around to watch it go down."

"I _can_ do this alone," Aiden offered. "Not as well or as easily, but if you really want no part..."

T-Bone groaned, put his head back and stared at the colourless sky. "Fuck it, of course I'll help."

He squared his shoulders and got to his feet, stared down at Aiden, "If that's what you want, I won't ditch you. Been too long for that. I still think it's pretty dumb, but it's your choice."

He grinned a little, "Let's give them a show."

* * *

><p>01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000<p>

01101101 01100001 01110011 01101011

00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000

01100111 01101111 01101001 01101110

01100111 00100000 01110101 01110000

The press called it the Glitch.

For exactly ten seconds, all ctOS screens in Chicago — and _only_ in Chicago — had flashed a message and then returned to normal as if nothing had happened. Most people had seen it, there were barely any screens left _not _networked in some way to ctOS. In the midst of the wildest speculations Blume was running damage control, but they were fighting the tide.

ctOS — not compromised, not hacked in decades, notoriously without exploits — _ctOS _had apparently just slipped their control and after the ten seconds had passed a certain sense of doubt lingered in those circles of society still perceptive enough to tell a true breach from a viral marketing stunt.

It was obvious, if you knew where to look, just how petrified Blume's PR personnel was, how frantic police and Corporate Police became in the Glitch's aftermath.

_The mask is going up. _

* * *

><p><em>End of _Quaint Old World: The Good Life<em>

* * *

><p><strong><em>References:<em> **'The Good Life' by Weezer plays on the radio in the game and is half the reason this particular installment even exists.

'The mask is going up' is used as code by Aiden in the novel "Dark Clouds". That binary code probably should have been a QR code to keep with game aesthetics, but this site doesn't allow such things. The QR code is my profile picture, however.


	12. Surplus Killing

**Note: **If playing fast and loose with in-game hacks bothers you, hang up now. If 5000+ words detailing Aiden's limitless badassness disagrees with your world view, hang up now.

Foxes, like most predators, engage in _'surplus killing'_, where they kill more prey than they actually need, simply because it's available. Or for the fun of it.

* * *

><p>[summary: aiden's enemies decide to set a trap for him. aiden decides to take it on.]<p>

[this takes place after bad blood, but before dark clouds]

**_Surplus Killing**

* * *

><p>Normally, he wouldn't have come. Or at least, he'd come with backup and a safety net. But this was not normal, he was going to set an example. Of course, he had always known the prize on his head would draw headhunters and fixers from across the country. They came and he picked them off, one by one. Sometimes he got to them so early, they never saw him coming. Or he made sure they never even saw him at all, nor any traces of him anywhere. Others turned out to be skilled enough to bring themselves face to face with him, or at least scope to head. It didn't much matter, because it always ended the same way.<p>

This was different, it was _bigger. _And he was growing a little tired of the game and his own constant paranoia it inspired. He _was _ahead of them, but it cost him, time and energy and the longer it went on, the more likely he became to slip up, make one tiny, but crucial mistake. So this was a gift he wasn't going to waste. The fixers would learn a little lesson, hopefully it would be good enough to keep them off his back for a while, do enough damage to their confidence that they thought twice before taking him on.

It was simple mathematics. What they stood to lose had to outweigh what they stood to gain. Even a particularly stupid fixer would eventually learn not to play with fire.

Which brought him here, to a Club-owned warehouse down in the Wards. It had been stripped days before in preparation, emptied of all valuables which might have been stored there. They even had attempted to take it out of the ctOS network, though it had taken only a little effort to reconnect things. Just because he planned on walking into their trap didn't mean he was going to sink himself to his neck in it.

There was just one last conundrum he couldn't solve. He had known something was brewing, but it was Jordi who had delivered the details and pointed him in the right direction. And Jordi wasn't trustworthy anymore_._ The only reason he could think of why Jordi would help him — and help at no charge — was because he hoped to cash in himself. A second trap could be in place, something he hadn't been able to spot, because Jordi, of all the fixers in Chicago, knew how he worked. Jordi could get to him. Didn't mean Jordi could take him down, just meant things would turn into an ugly mess.

So, was this Jordi's trap? Was he using the other fixers as cover for his own operation, or was it Jordi's way of apologising for screwing him over against Damien? Jordi tended to be unpredictable, but then, entirely predictable in his unpredictability. I just didn't seem like his style. Jordi was a hands-on type of guy, not one for convoluted plots and setups weeks in the making.

It _could _be exactly what it appeared to be: A bunch of fixers after the big money, banding together for whatever strength they hoped there was in numbers.

Technically, it wasn't too late to back out, because even if he hadn't missed anything, if this really was what it seemed to be, it could still be fatal. The fixers _could _have the numbers and the marksmen and sheer, dumb luck on their side. He wasn't bulletproof. There was no guarantee he was better than them.

Sitting outside the warehouse in a stolen car, eyes cast down to his phone, awaiting the results as it scanned the surrounding area, the thought crossed his mind only briefly. He had not chosen the battlefield, but he was certain he knew it better, knew it's flaws and corners. It was going to be his show. If he wasn't good enough to be last man standing, the fixers deserved to get to him.

He got out of the car and slung the biometric rifle over his shoulder. No way he could hide a weapon this size, but there was a time and a place for subtlety and it was neither here nor tonight.

The fixers had invested some time into constructing the scenario to bring him here. He had taken care to make the vigilante's appearance be never quite according to schedule, never quite as predictable as his enemies might like, but this would have been difficult to ignore. In all probability, he really would have walked into that trap and from what he had seen, he wouldn't have survived it.

The criminal world had been shaken up badly, twice in quick succession. First, with Iraq's death the Black Viceroys had been thrown in disarray, sparking countless small turf wars among Iraq's lieutenants, fighting over who was going to control which part of Iraq's empire. The Viceroys had always been the most powerful gang in the Wards, even in Aiden's youth, and they had only grown since. But Iraq had been a stablising factor, without him, all bets were off.

Quinn's death had gone more smoothly, at least on the surface. His son, Niall, had slipped into Lucky's shoes and the transfer had gone without much of a hitch. Paying attention, listening to T-Bone and his contact at Chicago PD, or just _walking down the street _on some days told a slightly different story. The Club was struggling to keep it together with Lucky Quinn's far-reaching influence suddenly gone. They were exposed, to rivals and the law in equal measure.

And into this atmosphere, the fixers had strewn their rumours to draw Aiden out. The underworld leaders, the rumour said, all of them, would come together under a truce and _negotiate _how Chicago would be shared between them, restoring the mob-owned peace it had held before. The city was big enough for all of them, after all, and tearing each other apart was just ruining everybody's business.

No way in hell would Aiden have risked missing it.

The streets were deserted in all directions, not uncommon for Brandon Docks, but he suspected something more was at play this time. The warehouse had stood empty for a few months, the parking lot and loading areas left to be overgrown. A handful of shipping containers were haphazardly placed around, rusting away in the changing weather. Trash and other debris littered the place. The homeless preferred to stay closer to populated areas, but they'd take everything that offered shelter in winter. He saw none of those, no sign of the amassed force of fixers, either.

He stopped at the gate, it hung askew, but had clearly recently been moved. His phone hummed, informed him the scan had finally finished and he pulled it out, watching as it dotted a 3D map of the place with red dots, enemies, or at least people. Profiler supplied names for some of them, but it returned a handful of error messages, but the list of professions matched his expectation. Mercenaries, former soldiers, former police, private security contractors, most of them with records of one violent crime or other.

He was about to put the phone away, but as an afterthought, he switched off the scrambler. Blume — he was fairly sure it was Blume, with or without Club support — was paying good money for this show, they might as well enjoy it unpixelated. Just this once, when it wasn't in their interest to send all of Chicago PD after him once the system identified him.

The inside of the warehouse was mostly empty, a broad walkway running its circumference about one and a half story above, housing offices or common rooms or storage for tools. He looked up as he walked inside, scanned the walkway with his gaze for what he already knew was there: seven snipers, but all of them well out of sight to the naked eye.

At the centre of the hall, lit from above by strong lamps, were two crescent tables, set up like some political summit meeting, but both table and chairs were bare wood, set-dressing to fool only a casual onlooker. He wondered how long the fixers expected him to believe the scam.

He was supposed to reach the table, he decided. He should stop there, regard it and conclude he'd been played.

He strode through the empty hall, one hand hooked around the strap of the BAR, the other in his pocket, wrapped loosely around his phone. He knew it's contour by touch alone, good enough to know where he'd put all the important buttons. His boots made low sounds on the rough floor, crunching the dirt there as he advanced on the table. Four cameras tracked his movement, unblinking eyes on him, recording it all.

He stopped, turned on his heels to survey the empty table. Above him, something metallic scraped and hissed, the old walkway complaining under shifting weight. In a corner, something came loose and fell to the ground. He played along, he could afford to. Turned his head toward the noise, caught movement at the edge of his vision and finally looked up to meet a sniper's gaze past where he leaned behind the scope.

The laser sight stung his eyes briefly, before it chittered down to his chest and was joined by three others. Four on his back, then. Not the brightest thing to do, considering he was wearing a bulletproof vest, something they _could _have anticipated. He wasn't a great fan of laser sights, either, but he supposed they served an additional purpose. It wasn't _enough _just to kill him and take the money for it, no, they needed this moment. They needed him to _know. _

He switched on the timer on his phone, then raised both hands over his head. He took a small step away from the table, turned in a slow circle to map them all. Ah, yes, there were the others. If he had miscalculated the time, this could be ugly. Even if the vest stopped the bullets — fairly good range for snipers, they might do some damage — he could end up with cracked or even broken ribs, no fighting condition for the two dozen guys hiding as backup outside.

He looked away from the sniper he was facing, found one of the cameras instead and gave the audience on the other end a hard look.

The counter on his phone reached zero, send its signal and detonated the explosives he had spent the better part of a night carefully putting into place. They took out the support beams of the walkway and the entire thing came down in screaming metal, burning plastics and tearing wallboard. Somewhere above, windows shattered and added their glittering shards to pieces of broken furniture and scraps of singed paper.

Aiden thought of himself as nothing more than a talented amateur when it came to explosives. He had to do a lot of preparation to make sure his IEDs didn't just take the entire warehouse down. He had to weasel his way into the city archive, too, because floor-plans for the place weren't stored digitally. He'd been careful, made sure none of the bombs were too close to anything supporting the hall itself _and _the devices had to be small enough that they didn't attract the attention of the fixers when they set up their own shit.

It seemed to have worked out exactly according to plan.

The shockwave rolled against him, carrying heat and choking dust, it picked up his coattails and whipped them around him. He dropped his hands, pulled his scarf over his mouth and nose and jump-started. Pulling the BAR from his shoulder and the phone from his pocket, stealing a quick look while he found cover behind still churning debris.

The men outside were already on the move, circling the warehouse to cover all exits, make sure he stayed put, hoping to get at him from all directions.

The blast from the IEDs had knocked out most of the cameras, only one was still responsive, though knocked free and hanging by its cables. It was an unwelcome but not unexpected development, he'd have preferred a better look outside, but he was far from blind. A quick scan revealed several cellphone frequencies in his immediate vicinity, he couldn't pinpoint them exactly while they were moving, but more than enough to get some idea of where they were, updating the map.

While he was at it, he uploaded a virus to the phones, not bothering with those with any kind of security. He send a signal to a randomly selected quarter of the phones so they'd overheat, hopefully in somebody's pocket. Results of this particular trick varied depending on brand and age of the phone and the health of its battery. If they were very unlucky, the phones exploded.

Lastly, he tapped into their communication. Or rather, he tried to. He wasted a precious moment staring at the error message while the dust around him slowly began to settle.

There was no sign of the snipers, probably crushed and buried under bent metal and broken wood. If one of them had survived, he'd soon wish he hadn't, it would be a while before help came to find them.

So, his would-be killers had forgone communication. It explained why hadn't picked up anything before walking into the warehouse, but he had assumed they were simply holding to radio silence before the trap was sprung, but apparently they'd paid attention to how previous encounters with him went. Not bad, he thought vaguely, but dropped the phone into his pocket again and moved away from the debris.

He followed the outline of the hall until he found a gap to squeeze through and navigate his way to a door, easily scaling over or slipping past what blocked his path until he found one of the doors. It was only partially covered up, easy to clear out. The door opened outward, jammed perhaps but nothing a good tuck couldn't solve.

A group of fixers were coming for the door, scattered around outside to give him no clear shot. At least five, maybe more in case not all of them were carrying phones.

He pressed his back against the wall and waited.

Some enterprising fixer, if he had ctOS access for example, could know he was there and the wall of the warehouse wasn't thick enough to block concerted fire of a weapon with any kind of punch. They could kill him and he'd barely even know what hit him. It was a calculated risk, but then, his calculations tended to be good.

Someone tore open the door and the barrel of a gun preceded its owner as he edged inside carefully. The problem with riot gear and why Aiden preferred to cut down on armament, was it restricted vision and movement. He edged closer to the door, before the fixer came through and the man had no chance to spot him in time.

Aiden reached for the gun, closed a gloved hand around it and yanked the fixer inside, snapped the gun up and stepped into his knee. The fixer went down and one-handed, Aiden brought up the BAR, pushed it into his neck and fired downward, a salve going right through his torso, _inside _his bulletproof vest.

He dropped the man's deadweight, put both hands to the BAR and, firing, crossed to the other side of the door. On this side, more broken debris offered some additional cover. He heard some shouts outside and send the overheat signal to the nearest phone. A moment later, someone shrieked.

Aiden crouched down and leaned out of cover, using the moment of confusion, picked his targets and fired in short, hard bursts, leaned into the recoil as it punched his shoulder and strained his arms. The shots hit two men in the head, tearing open a neck and sending a spray of blood down over him as he stumbled in mid-run. The other took the burst in the face, an efficient, if extreme way to circumvent Profiler.

A third took the bullets into his arm and down his leg as he tried to dive for cover. Not dead, but definitely out. Left the one with the hot phone, but Aiden couldn't spot him. It was time to move anyway, he had at least twenty more coming for him and they knew where he was now. Time to go somewhere else.

He dipped out into the backyard and ran past the dead — or dying — fixers and into the position he'd sprung them from.

"Shit!" the owner of a molten phone shouted, squatting behind a concrete boulder as he spotted Aiden coming for him. Aiden swerved to the side, reached for the man and ignored the fixer's left-handed attempt to raise a handgun. He gripped the edge of the man's helmet and threw his full weight into a hard wrench. The helmet wasn't a very good hold, too loose to break the man's neck but he certainly felt it, screamed and was toppled over and onto his back. Aiden stopped over him, shot him in the face, but didn't stay.

Lamps mounted on tall poles flooded the open yard with white spotlights, brightness broken by the murky darkness of a city. He could switch the lights off entirely, but he wasn't sure it'd be to his disadvantage. The fixers were outfitted for a war-zone, they could be equipped with night-sight goggles, prepared for just such a stunt. He liked to work in darkness, it wouldn't be a bad guess. No, leaving the lights on was the better move and as long as he made sure his own night vision wasn't ruined, he could still make it work for him.

"There he is!"

If the man had had any sense, he'd have taken aim and fired instead of yelling, because he was coming out of the shadows where Aiden hadn't been able to spot him. The scan hadn't picked up, either, he wasn't carrying anything networked to ctOS.

With the warning, Aiden had time to drop down behind the boulder the fixer. Time, too, to bring his own rifle back around and fire. He hit the fixer's legs and he stumbled, Aiden kept at it. The man was dead before he stopped moving.

Two more fixer had taken cover while their comrade was being mowed down, calling to each other, but too quietly for Aiden to understand. He gauged the distance, too far to make it even if he took them by surprise, but he didn't have time to spare. Others were already circling around the warehouse and get at him from behind or the side, where the boulder would be useless.

Bullets hissed close over his head, reminding him to keep it down. Rather than be cornered, he sent the overload order to the remainder of the phones he'd hacked earlier.

"The hell?!" he heard, giving the sign and he dove out of cover, blind-firing because he didn't have the time and he only needed to cross the distance. He jumped the heavy barrel that served one of the fixers as cover, kicked him in the face and brought his his rifle around before he even landed and released another burst in the vague direction of the second man. At this range, he could barely miss and the fleshy shattering of bone alongside a sharply cut-off scream told him he hadn't.

He counted off two explosions in the distance and several screams. That made about ten down, give or take a few.

There was a trick to it all, a rhythm for him, because there were so many things for him to remember and to plan and to time. An eye on the phone, one through the scope and at least two to cover his back, another to make sure where he was going, looking ahead and behind and all sides. Riding the cameras tended to take long, time he spared only when he thought he had it. It was always a running calculation of risk and reward, a constant re-evaluation of how far he could go and come out alive on the other side.

It was juggling with weapons, too, swapping between the assault rifle and the pistol and the baton if he ran out of ammo and time to reload, if he got close enough to an enemy — or the other way around, because he still had blind spots no matter how hard he tried to cover all angles. He had to know which hits he could take and which would take him out of the fight, decisions stacking up within seconds.

The fight crossed the open field and ctOS had miscounted the numbers much more dramatically than he had anticipated. Perhaps it wasn't by chance, perhaps these people knew his methods better than they should, or perhaps he just wasn't a well-kept secret anymore. He found himself hard-pressed, forced to retreat one step after another he didn't want to take, just so he could keep the fixers from flanking him.

He was still counting them off, seventeen down, then eighteen. Twenty-three, no, twenty-_four. _

Inside the warehouse, the dust had settled and it was dark. What lights there had been had died with the explosion. As he dove into that darkness, he thought he heard a whimper somewhere, some broken sniper still hoping for rescue. He had no time to check. A bullet grazed his arm, tore through the leather of his coat and ripped a sliver of flesh free, but then there a respite in the fire. He knew it was because they'd lost sight of him, had slowed their advance and swarmed the hall until a gunshot or just the spark on the muzzle of his pistol allowed them to find him again.

A low thud, off to the side, far too close and he knew it was a grenade and he was too close to get clear, if it was cooked or not. All he could do was throw himself away and down, as far as he could go and hope for the best. The blast threw him down, seared his back and the side of his head. It knocked the BAR from his hands and send it flying off somewhere in the darkness.

"He's down!"

Aiden scrambled back to his feet, wondering if the grenade had knocked him out for a moment, because the fixers were already on him, open muzzles of shotguns about to blast right through his vest, perforate his unprotected limbs while he still struggled with the concept of balance. He wrapped his hand around the handle of the baton and brought it up, still retracted and punched the short length of metal into the nearest fixer's face, made a grip for the nearest gun with the other hand and shoved it aside, just enough to make the shot miss him, but close enough to feel the blast.

He ducked away under the shotgun after that, used the momentum to swing the baton, open it to its full length and brought it around on the back of another attacker while the group of them still struggled to turn around against their own inertia. He jumped aside, made another shotgun burst miss him by a handful of inches.

Coming up finally, behind a fixer, he got the baton square across his throat from behind, held him against as meat-shield while the steel of the baton choked him. It gave him a moment, enough to see one of the downed fixer, struggling ineffectively to get back up. His gun had fallen from his hands and he didn't seem to be going for it. Left one more and a few across the hall running toward them, unwilling to open fire while their comrades were tangling so closely with Aiden.

Aiden pulled the baton up and back and felt the fixer go limp in his hands. He let him slip away, shoved his coat back and pulled his pistol and shot from the hip upward, watched as the bullet cut through the last fixer's face from below, leaving a neat hole from the front and brain splattered behind.

He shoved the pistol back into its holster and took a running start, picked up the dropped shotgun from where it had fallen and slid over a piece of debris for whatever cover it offered. He slid further in its shadow and climbed a bent out of shape metal ladder leaning over a pile for height.

It was the optimum range for the shotgun, especially one loaded with slugs. It was clean, for a measure of _clean. _It took three shots to down them. One to the face, the other took two hits in the chest and the throat.

Aiden lowered the gun slowly. He'd made a mistake, of course, getting up so high, making himself an easy target and there it was, the price. Pebbles and dirt crunched under boots and Aiden turned to find another fixer advance on him, assault rifle ready. The man moved cautiously and it took a moment for Aiden to place his awkward stance, but he must be the one who had taken the baton to the back, he was lucky he could walk at all. He'd be lucky if he walked straightever again, even if he survived.

"Alright you fucking bastard," the man growled, anger and something close to panic making his voice waver. "Drop the gun."

Aiden turned to face him fully. He lowered the shotgun, let it slip through his grip slowly until it fell to the metal, away through the gaps. Without taking his gaze off the fixer, he climbed down from his vantage point, bent down to pick up the baton.

"Hey!"

Aiden tilted his head, the only concession. With the baton in hand, he kept walking for the fixer with measured steps. He actually made the man retreat before he remembered he was holding a gun. "Stop right there!"

But he didn't stop until he stood right front of the fixer, muzzle of the rifle pointing straight at his face. He could have leaned into it, actually touched it if he'd wanted to. The fixer seemed somewhat confused, in pain and, even before that, realising just how much of his depth he was. It took too long for him to pull the trigger, he shouldn't even have called out, what was he trying to do anyway? Take Aiden captive? Where would be the point? No one in this city wanted him on trial, he knew too many dirty secrets, no one could risk him spilling even one word.

The fixer came to a conclusion, his features hardened in the moment before he pulled the trigger.

Except, nothing happened.

The fixer had picked up the closest weapon, he would have checked it's ammo state, but paid no attention that he had gotten Aiden's biometric rifle. The one gun in the world that couldn't be turned against its owner.

Confusion washed over the fixer's face, closely followed by sheer panic. Aiden reached out to hold on to the rifle, a casual gesture, and brought up the baton, smashed its tip into the fixer's temple, knocking him out cold.

Another sound, right behind him and Aiden whirled around, twisted his BAR in his hand and let go of the baton to grip the rifle with both hands.

"What use is a weapon that won't fire?" another fixer asked across the barrel of a handgun. He looked a little worse for wear, but Aiden couldn't quite identify him like this. One he had taken down much earlier and either mistaken for dead or hadn't had the time to finish off.

The trick here was not to advertise his own actions, tip his enemy off to what he was going to do. The fixer didn't think the rifle in Aiden's hand was dangerous, but he must have enough knowledge and instinct to read the truth in Aiden's face.

"You know, you really are a tough motherfucker," the fixer continued. "And you're _batshit_. Taking you down is a fucking public service! I should get a medal. Just look at all of this!"

Aiden didn't. He kept his gaze glued to the fixer's gun, rather than the man's face, never meeting his eyes. He adjusted the angle of his gun a little, just to make sure he hit vulnerable tissue.

"You're sick, man! You know that, right? I will…"

Aiden shot, one harsh round, beating into the fixer's bulletproof vest and up, across his collar and throat and through the left half of his face. The blast threw the man back, tossed him through the debris and his gun fell from twitching fingers.

Aiden flexed his shoulders, took a few steps forward until he stood over the fixer. He was still alive, barely, one undamaged eye fixing on Aiden with some difficulty.

"If you want to lose a fight," Aiden said, put his rifle to the fixer's forehead. "Talk about it first."

He pulled the trigger and while the twitching stopped the wide-eyed disbelief remained on the dead fixer's face.

Aiden retrieved the baton, closed it and stored it away as he crossed back through the ruined warehouse to where the last camera was still swaying slightly from the wind cutting through the blown-out windows.

He glanced up at it, pulled his phone from his pocket and switched the scrambler back on.

"Show's over."

* * *

><p>He had a few new stitches on his arm and they stung as the hot water of the shower ran over them. Not badly, by any stretch of the imagination, but enough to make themselves felt. His whole body was like that. Nothing unbearable, nothing that wouldn't heal<em>, <em>just scratches and bruises, minor cuts and minor burns, it was barely even pain, just an ache settled deep inside his bones threatening to hollow him out.

The buzzing of his phone cut into the revery of hot water and steam. Rather than respond — or curse because he hadn't switched it off — he just turned his face into the spray, let the water beat into his face until he felt the muscles there relax.

The phone kept buzzing. Someone _very_ persistent. He gave up, turned off the water and pushed his wet hair from his eyes, going through the very short list of people who even knew that number and all of them would know not to abuse it. Something important, then.

He picked up the phone from the edge of the sink, stopped briefly before he answered. Jordi? Not quite who he had expected.

"What?"

_"I won't ask how it went, because I really already know. Honestly, some days you are a pleasure to watch, kind of a turn on…" _

"Too much information, Jordi."

_"… and the Grid's all abuzz, too. It looks to me like you've really made your point. In fact, the consensus so far is, no one's going to take the contract. I mean, of course it's still on offer and I'm guessing it's just a question of time until the pot's sweetened some more. It's going to be some time until someone tries you again. You'll be bored to tears by how peaceful it's going to be, mark my words. Someone _will _take it eventually, though." _

Aiden padded through the room, trailing water, because the towel slung over his shoulder wasn't really making much of a difference.

"Including you?" he asked. He got a beer from the minibar and a few painkillers from the open packet on the table. There was no opener, so he squeezed the phone between shoulder and ear, opened the bottle against the edge of the table.

_"Jesus, Pearce, will you ever let me hear the end of it? It was a good job. If someone'd take you down, wouldn't you rather it be a friend?"_

"You're not inspiring confidence," Aiden pointed out, chewing down on a pill before he washed it them with a sip from the bottle.

_"Would it help if I told you I knew you'd get yourself out of it?" _

"You held a gun to my face, if you thought I'd get out of it, you wouldn't have done it," Aiden said, but he couldn't summon much passion. He dropped the towel into an armchair and let himself fall after it, sinking into the cushions.

_"Does 'water under the bridge' mean anything to you? No, wait. It's Aiden Pearce I'm talking to and that expression is a complete mystery to him. But can we get this straightened out?" _

"I'm in a good mood," he said. The motel stocked surprisingly good beer. "What do you even want?"

On the other end of the line, Jordi gave a mannered sigh. _"What happened, happened. I can't take it back and, let's face it, I wouldn't even if I could. It's a question of self-respect. But it's all worked out for the best in the end and I really do like the kind of mayhem you get up to when the mood strikes you. It's a talent! And I like talent. How about this? We consider each other even. I tipped you off about today, didn't I? Not to pad myself on the shoulder, but I _know _I saved your life." _

Aiden didn't answer immediately. "Not good enough," he said then. "How do I know you aren't looking to collect yourself?"

_"Oh, you don't. But look at me, eating humble pie just for you. If there's one thing you'll believe, how is this: It's more lucrative working with you than against you?" _

Aiden grinned, "That sounds more like the Jordi I know."

_"I just want to know where we stand. I think deserve that, after all the good times we've had? And the… one… slightly less good time." _

"Where we stand?" Aiden asked. "We stand where I don't go out of my way to put a bullet through your head and you don't give me a reason to change my mind about it. That's where we stand."

_"God, you're difficult." _

Some anger was working itself into Jordi's voice, patience slowly running low. _"Have it your way. See if I ever help you again."_

Aiden took another sip from the beer, still grinning a little.

"You aren't afraid of me. You need me for a job, don't you?"

Jordi had never been slow, he picked up on things quickly. True, he often chose to ignore it if he didn't care about it, but that was an entirely different dysfunction. This time, it took half a heartbeat longer than it should have and _that_ was just a little more satisfying than it should have been, too.

_"Finally," _Jordi huffed. _"Can we _finally _talk business again? Good. I was a little worried you'd never come around." _

* * *

><p><em>End of _Surplus Killing<em>

* * *

><p><strong>References: <strong>_"If you want to lose a fight, talk about it first."_Quellcrist Falconer in the Takeshi Kovacz novels by Richard K. Morgan (I've been waiting so long to quote Quell!)

**Author's Note on...**

**... Jordi: **If you've heard the audio logs in Bad Blood, you'll know that Aiden's sometimes given to angsting, bakes in his spare time and seems to regard Jordi as a pretty close approximation to a friend. I like to think the feeling's mutual. (Maybe they make cupcakes together on weekends.)

**... Aiden**: First close encounter with Aiden as POV character (Dogtown doesn't count) and he's an _experience_. He kept running away with the story and he's very hard to keep in line. (It's a thousand words more than I planned! Bloody hell...)

Next up, either Poppy or another thing with Damien.


	13. Nightcall No 1

**The Very Long Author's Note: **Poppy fascinates me. Her character design is very unique, but her role is minor and we barely learn anything about her at all. I guess, at this point, that her story was cut content in some way. I'm holding out hope for her appearence in the sequel or a DLC.

For now, this is sole and exclusively my own interpretation of her character and her role in the game.

**Additional Note: **I have great plans for this segment, but I'm not sure I can actually pull it off. I'm going to try and write Poppy and Aiden into a relationship, but they never really talk face to face (only about business or other life-and-death matters) but they _really _talk only on the phone at night. Maybe you recognise the mood of these calls.

Some of their exchanges will only hint at backstory and will leave gaps. I don't want to infodump. Important bits should be clear (or become clear as the story unfolds.)

**Lastly, **it's no secret that I disdain almost all depictions of romantic love. It doesn't mean I don't acknowledge the feeling or that I reject all iterations of it. However, if you expect flowers and chocolate and dialogues going _I love you/I love you, too_, you'll be greatly disappointed. I try to depict complex relationships, in this as in everything else I write. I'll let you be the judge of how well I do.

* * *

><p>[this takes place after the main events of the game]<p>

**_Nightcall #1**

* * *

><p>"<em>Chances are you dialed this number by mistake. If so, hang up now. If you're trying to find me, you're not going to, so hang up now. There won't be a beep."<em>

"Hello? Well, you know me as Poppy. I'm only calling because I've never had a chance to thank you properly after what you did. You saved many lives that night, including mine and I owe you. I've seen you on the news, I'm sure you save so many, it barely registers anymore, though I guess something must keep you going, too. So, before I start rambling, let me say it again: Thank you. And if there's ever anything I can do in return, I'm sure you'll know how to find me.

I thought you should know I've decided to work for Chicago PD. I know the scene, more intimately than I'd like, but perhaps something good will come of it in the end. I know who to talk to, who to lean on. The girls will talk with me when they'll never speak to a police officer. Someone has to help them, it might as well be me. At least I know what it's like.

Perhaps it's also a way to make amends, I'm not sure. I did a lot wrong in my life, maybe I can make up for it somehow. These women — and there are children and boys and grown men, too — they need someone to watch out for them who really understands what they are going through. I don't think I'm their saviour in some way, just one person, doing her best. I think that's all anyone can ask, isn't it?

But I do call for another reason, too. I didn't have time to realise it before. I'm sure you've noticed I wasn't at my best when we met and things moved very quickly, but now, with time, I think I've managed to put all the pieces in the right place. I didn't recognise you in the Infinite 92 and during the auction, but the more I think about it, the more certain I am. You _were _at the Merlaut, two years ago, when Quinn was hacked.

It's possible you…"

_"Donna. I'm here."_

"You've been listening to me all this time?"

_"Making sure you check out. There was trace on the call, your friends at CPD, no doubt. What do you mean, you remember me from the Merlaut?"_

"Two years ago. I was working with Iraq. He was hacking Quinn's network, looking for something he could use. It went badly. I never learned the details of what happened. There must have been a second hacker in the system at the same time and an alarm was triggered. Quinn put everythig he had on the trail and Iraq let me take the fall to make sure his involvement wasn't discovered. He pinned it on me and they sentenced me to… well, what you saw. Quinn wouldn't believe a word I said after Iraq was finished. I'm still not sure why they didn't kill me immediately. Some money to be made from a pretty face, I guess, while it was still pretty. Crispin would've taken care of that."

_"Only if he'd been very fast." _

"Because of the pocket knife? I never stood a chance, but I thought, well, maybe I can at least force him to kill me quickly. Don't think I don't know how lucky I am it never had to come to that."

_"There _was_ a second hacker at the Merlaut. You knew Iraq well?" _

"Not that well. Well enough to trust him more than I should have, perhaps. Iraq had plans. _Big _plans. He wasn't just a mad dog, he had a brain in him. For a time, I thought maybe he could turn things around for the whole neighbourhood. I thought the entire gang-banger act was just to win respect. You can't change that place from the bottom, you'll have to do it when you're on top. I thought in the end, he'd break the cycle, make things better."

_"I doubt he was on the way to do that." _

"Yes, it doesn't look so good now, in hindsight. But he had the means, he could've been one of the good ones. But look at Rossi-Fremont. It's like ten years ago, like it was before Iraq. All the same cycle of violence and poverty and more violence."

_"Iraq put it outside the system. At least people are connected again." _

"But there's still no real hope. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Where it's all going to go? ctOS is supposed to sort out those sorts of places, but it can't can it? Because it's only about people and people make mistakes, or they're greedy or stupid, or just to desperate to realise what's right in front of them. It doesn't really matter if it's Iraq or somebody else."

_"You want to make a difference." _

"I could probably say the same thing to you. But there's a large gap between _wanting to_ make a difference and really changing things for the better. I'm sure of what I do, but that's now, that's with the memories for Quinn's auction and my time at the Infinite 92 still fresh in my mind. What if, years down the line, I look back and Rossi-Fremont and all the other place that are _exactly like _Rossi-Fremont are still unchanged? I'll look back and I'll realise I changed nothing. I think that's what I'm heading for: Embitterment."

_"That's not a good way to think." _

"It's the realistic way to think. What keeps _you_ going?"

_"That's a hard question." _

"Yes."

_"It's also going to be a hard answer and you may not like it. The truth is complicated."_

"Isn't it always? I'm difficult to shock."

_"Another time, perhaps. Listen, there may be something you can help me with, if you were serious?" _

"I've been through too much to go back on my word. And I _really _have been through too much to be easily scared by anything. If you need my help, I'll be there, no holding back. It's the least I can do."

_"Even if I put you back in the line of fire?" _

"That's the point, isn't it?"

_"Well, yes. Your employers won't like it if you work with me." _

"Would you be surprised to learn CPD isn't all negative about the vigilante's presence on the streets? It's a mixed bag, of course, and the official line is something else again, but so far, you do more good than harm and enough of them realise that. It doesn't mean they wouldn't arrest you if they had the chance. And _are _a cop-killer, too. That doesn't go over well.

But, now that my life is my own again, I'll do with it what I like. If I decide to help you, it's none of their business. They don't need to know about everything I do. And I'm sure you have some tricks to help cover your tracks."

_"A few, perhaps. I'll get back to you."_

* * *

><p><em>End of _Nightcall #1<em>

* * *

><p><strong>References<strong>: 'Nightcall' like the song by Kavinsky that plays that the beginning of Drive.

**About that… **I _think _Aiden's phone doesn't actually take messages, but for the sake of this story, let's imagine it does. I'm sure fanfic authors have altered canon in worse ways than this. Also, let's also imagine Aiden made sure Poppy could contact him in some way.


	14. Nightcall: Indigo State

**Edit: **I just realised, what I originally considered 'Indigo State _Part 2_' isn't really a continuation at all. Indigo State stands on its own.

**Note/Warning:** Nothing much happens in this part. And that's not a cliffhanger at the end, either. I'm so sorry.

* * *

><p>[summary: aiden enlists poppy's help with a job]<p>

**_Nightcall: Indigo State**

* * *

><p><em>"You called. Something wrong?"<em>

"That depends. I heard a strange rumour. It said Nicholas Crispin is back in Chicago. I'm surprised his death isn't common knowledge."

_"There was a lot of chaos, before and after the cops raided the auction. I _'heard' _Crispin has gone into hiding, keeping his head down. Many of the buyers and sellers are doing it. Small fry, mostly." _

"You've been spreading the rumours! Why would you keep him alive?"

_"I can use him." _

* * *

><p><strong>To: <strong>Donna Dean

**From:** [unknown]

**Message:** _need help, picking you up, 10:30 tonight, wear something nice._

* * *

><p>The thought that <em>Aiden Pearce <em>of all people was just asking her out on a date with characteristic aplomb amused her throughout the evening, picking out a dress and painting her face. It made her smile, even though she knew well enough it wasn't anything like that.

Punctual to the second, a dark magnate drew to a halt across the street, parked in the gap of darkness between two street lights and Donna stalked over on too high heels, little clicking noises on the rough concrete.

She settled in the backseat of the magnate. She gave Pearce a wan smile from the side and said, "Something nice? Why are we playing dress-up?"

"Because we're going to do this the old-fashioned way," Pearce said, himself lodged on the other side, face hidden in the shadow of a fedora and the upturned collar of his dark coat. "Or you are, I'm just backup."

The car picked up speed right from the start, shooting down the road aggressively. She didn't know who the driver was, but if Pearce trusted him, she had no issues with him.

"Clue me in?" she asked.

"We're going to a club called Indigo State. It used to be mob-owned, but since Lucky's death the Club's struggling to keep all their assets under control. Indigo State _seems _to be under independent ownership, but I couldn't trace where the money was coming from, or where it goes. The manager, guy called Haugh, he's a paranoid technophobe."

"Can't really blame him," she mused.

"His computers aren't networked to ctOS and they don't have any wifi capabilities. Haugh's strict about his staff's phones, doesn't want them around. Long story short, I can't get in without getting in."

"You think there's something fishy going on?"

"No, I _know _there's something fishy going on. The nightclub is a front, or possibly a lucrative side-investment. Half the criminal underworld of Illinois frequents the place, yet CPD doesn't even keep it under observation."

Chicago PD was her employer. Working with Pearce at all put whatever future she was building there in jeopardy, but it didn't feel like that. To her, as well as many she spoke to, Pearce and the law were on the same side, except _he _didn't have to respect people and property that didn't need to be respected. But then, all of that could just as easily be a nice fairy tale. The truth was, neither she nor anyone else, really knew what he was about.

"You think they've been bought off?" she asked.

"Maybe, but I barely got wind of all of this," he shrugged slightly. "It's possible CPD really doesn't even know. They depend on ctOS just as much as everyone else and Indigo does a good job at keeping itself under wraps."

"What _do_ you know?"

"Not enough, I don't even know what's in that basement. Could be a brothel, could be gambling, could be drugs or guns or secrets. It could even be something legit, but I find that hard to believe."

She looked away from him and outside. They were dipping into Mad Mile, lights flashing past in all colours, blinding her momentarily, pulling her along with the buzz.

"Why do you need me?" she asked.

"Two reasons. One, I know your skill-set, you can do this. Two, I got an exit strategy just for you."

She looked back at him when she heard him move. He pulled a small bundle from his side and handed it to her.

She put it on her lap and folded it open. Fine tools and tiny devises resting on dark cloth like diamonds. Bugs, clearly nothing you'd get on the open market judging by their size and she could only guess at their sophistication.

"You have to plant at least one of them close enough to one of the Indigo's computers," Pearce explained. "Not the ones on the ground floor, they are on a separate network, nothing important on those. You'll have to get upstairs to the office. Their range is good, if you drop them behind a computer, they'll work. Ideally, you get them inside the case. One will do, more for contingency. It'll give me wifi access to the network."

She folded the bundle up again carefully. It was small enough to fit into her bag without bulging it out too much.

"And the exit strategy?"

"Since Haugh's so paranoid, it's unlikely you won't be noticed. If you are, keep calm and get them to call me."

Faint amusement came into his voice, "Or rather, let them call Crispin."

"It's been months since the Crispin rumour started," she said. "You've been planning this for so long?"

The amusement still lingered in his voice. Part of her wished she could see more of his face to be certain of it.

He said, "Not this specifically. But it's a name the right kind of people will recognise. At the same time, his death is surrounded by too much confusion to be sure it really happened. No one left who could clear things up, at least as long as I keep it on the down-low."

He seemed to consider for a moment, then added, "Do you think people will recognise you?"

"Possible, I don't know," she shook her head. "But I can play the part, no problem."

She leaned back in her seat, took a long look at him in the dark car. "Is there a reason why you don't sneak in yourself?"

"I ran background checks on Haugh's staff, too many who know my face, too risky and I don't want to tip Haugh off that his security was breached at all. I show up there, it'll just rock the boat unnecessarily."

He pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped something on it. She watched his fingers move, momentarily mesmerised at the speed. Her own phone buzzed in her bag and she startled.

Without looking at her, he said, "I've uploaded floor-plans to your phone, I've updated the original plans with what I could find out about the place, but it's probably not a 100% accurate, but it should give you an idea where to go."

She was not privy to his goals, she barely knew him, she had spoken to him only twice on the phone after meeting him. She didn't know what he wanted, not in the long run. She didn't know what he could do at all. After the ctOS blackout of 2013, everyone knew the vigilante was, at least, a hacker with some access, though just how far or how deep nobody knew and Blume certainly wasn't telling anyone. Personally, after the short time she had ever known him, there wasn't much she would put past him.

She looked at the new files on her phone and didn't question why her firewall hadn't stood up to him for even a second. It just didn't seem to be worth worrying about.

"What's different today?"

"It's short notice, I know," he said, though if it was supposed to be an apology, it barely came across as one. "Some Hollywood people are here, they are thinking about using the club to shoot film scenes. They were scheduled for next weekend but the visit was moved forward. It's a good opportunity, they'll distract Haugh and his security for you."

The Indigo State was housed in a modern building, expensive glass walls, catching and amplifying the blue lights shining up from the ground. A long line of people was queueing outside under the watchful eye of several bouncers.

"You're on the list," Pearce said when the magnate rolled to a halt across from the entrance.

She only nodded and got out of the car. She was feeling tense and she didn't want him to notice. It wasn't the first time she had been back in a nightclub, Chicago PD had put her in several such places, though most hadn't had the pompous front the Indigo State sported. It wasn't any indicator of legality at any rate. A good front was often just as good as keeping your location secret.

As she stepped into the Indigo State, the music rolled against her, laced with pretentious laughter and the air was heavy with perfume and faint traces of sweat and alcohol. It was a stylish crowd, dancing under a faked starry sky. Perhaps this was less sinister than the Infinite 92, but she could almost sense the dark secrets right underneath her feet. She spotted the men within the crowd who didn't quite belong, who came and went through a cordoned-off door and a narrow stairwell visible behind it.

Pearce was right. Something more went on in this place than met the eye.

* * *

><p>The rhythmic beat of the music from the dance-floor below chased her still, reminded her of just how short her timeframe was. Haugh's visitors from Hollywood had created a stir, had drawn people from the crowd who recognised them and security had had to move fast to prevent a scene, enough for her to slip away undetected and find herself on the upper floor and in the largest of several offices.<p>

She couldn't quite decide if Haugh was just out of it or whether he was one of the sane ones. The ctOS' complete and utter outage — not to mention its city-wide malfunction before that — could put a more balanced man on edge. Perhaps rejecting all this new tech wasn't just for the paranoid and stupid anymore. It certainly created more work for everyone.

The tiny screwdriver hummed quietly to itself as she unscrewed the casing of Haugh's laptop, put the bug inside. Ironically, Haugh's 'no network' policy probably meant he had nothing _else _configured at all. Not even a firewall, even if Pearce apparently barely acknowledged their existence.

She screwed the case closed, dropped the screwdriver back into her purse and rearranged the computer back on the desk in its rightful place. Haugh would never know until it was too late, would never…

The door opened and Donna didn't even have time to drop like a stone behind the desk. Damn the music. She should have heard someone come. This is what she got for gloating about Haugh's stupidity, she thought.

She threw up her hands and took a step back.

"I'm sorry!" she announced, making her voice a little shriller than it should be. At this point, her best bet was to play dumb. It made people feel superior and she didn't seem like much of a threat anymore.

"I got lost!" she added for good measure.

The man in the door wore a dark suit, house security then, frowning at her from across the room. He didn't seem to be buying it.

"Looking for what?" he demanded.

"A private place!" she babbled, stepping around the desk. "I wanted to do a line of coke! And I heard you didn't like that in this place and I didn't want to do it in the restroom…"

He didn't seem to be buying it. In fact, he took a step back and gave the lock on the door a critical look while carefully keeping her in his line of sight.

"Door was locked," he said. "Stop bullshitting me."

On the up-side, he wasn't going for his gun. Girls in high-heels and short dresses rarely seemed dangerous. Until you got a heel in your privates, that was, but if she tried, her entire story would fall apart.

"It wasn't locked!" she declared. "I… I'm sorry, I don't want any trouble."

He was obviously done listening to her story, she could see it in his face, clear as day. He put a hand to his earpiece and pointed with an outstretched arm, "Sit down there and shut up! No dumb moves!"

To his colleague, he said, "Get the boss, I found something in his office that doesn't belong."

Donna did as she was told, demurely clutching her bag in her lap and giving the bouncer her best imitation of confused innocence, but if it was working on him in any way, he was too professional to show it.

Not much later, he stepped aside to allow his boss inside and two other security.

Haugh was a tall man, badly combining a scrawny built with a flabby potbelly. He had wrapped both these things in an expensive designer suit that gave him some semblance of poise, sitting behind his desk and watching her with a kind of puzzled anger. He looked past Donna at his henchmen.

Haugh said, "What do you think? Cop? South Club? Fixer? Looks a bit too classy to be Viceroy."

Even without any — known — criminal affiliation, Haugh obviously knew how the game was being played. He couldn't hold his position if he was this weak-willed. And he was potentially at war with all of these groups, at least if Pearce's information was good and Haugh had independent backers.

"You've got it all wrong!" Donna tried again, playing her role for all it was worth.

"Wrong, eh?" he asked through a grin of startlingly white teeth. "You were snooping around in my office."

She swallowed dry, trying to clear her throat. "No, I got lost, okay? I was… I was looking for a quiet place. Do a line of coke. I know you don't approve, I didn't want to get into any trouble."

Haugh seemed unconvinced. She couldn't blame him, perhaps the story could have used a little more work, but usually in such matters, simple things worked best.

"Where is the coke?"

She shrugged, helplessly. "Well, I was already done when your thug showed up and scared me half to death." She opened her eyes wide. "Please don't hurt me."

"What were you doing in here?" he asked as if their previous exchange hadn't happened. Haugh seemed to have himself convinced she wasn't what she seemed and she couldn't decide if she should congratulate him on his intuition or not.

She bit down on her lip, not just playing anymore. If Haugh slipped her control completely, if he never believed her well enough to make the call…

"I can prove it," she said, voice carefully pitched to waver a little between fear and conviction. "Do you have a phone? Call and ask for Nicholas Crispin, I'm his… girl."

Haugh hesitated. She had no idea just how much the name meant to him. From what she knew, Haugh had been one of the second tier bosses who swam to the top in the gap created when Quinn's auction was curb-stomped a year before.

"Should I know that name?"

"Hey, boss, sounds familiar," said one of Haugh's henchmen. "He's, like, stinking rich, knew this guy, who worked…"

Haugh waved him into silence impatiently. "I know who he is, idiot," he snapped. He looked at Donna. "Everyone can throw around a big name to save their hide. It's not terribly believable, either. Crispin's dead."

"Keeping a low profile_," _she corrected, raising her voice a little. "It was so _terrible. _Cops all over the place and bodies piling up? It just seemed like a good time to go on holiday."

She could practically see the thoughts work behind Haugh's eyes, assessing her and the situation. Did she act spooked enough to be Crispin's girl? Or _too_ spooked_? _She had no idea what lie would help and which would make it worse.

Haugh looked at his henchman again. "Give me your phone."

The henchmen sprang into action and handed it over.

"Number?"

She told him and after he'd dialled, he put the phone between them, its ringing bounced around the room in the tense silence.

It took forever, at least that's what it felt like to her. Long enough, in fact, for her to wonder if Pearce hadn't abandoned her for some reason. He had enough enemies, perhaps he'd ran afoul of one of them and now couldn't hold up his end of the plan. She looked away from the phone and at Haugh, wondering what he would do if her story fell through. He couldn't know about the bug and he had yet to search her bag. If he did, however…

She let her gaze wander from Haugh to his henchmen, gauging her chances to slip past them. It didn't look good. Chicago PD had given her some training, but she didn't fool herself into thinking she stood a chance against three men like that.

_"Who is this?"_

Haugh said, "I'm calling from the club Indigo State, am I speaking with Mr. Crispin?"

There was a long pause, far too long for her comfort, but she had been spared ever meeting Crispin, she had no idea what to think of him. The question was, was Pearce any better informed? Was Haugh?

_"Who's asking?"_

"I'm Haugh, I'm the manager of this establishment. We had some trouble with a girl. She gave me this number."

Another long pause. _"Poppy? It's her night off." _

"Well, she has a few strange ideas of what to do with it," Haugh remarked. "We are holding her for you."

_"Good," _the voice on the other end of the line grew darker. _"Not a scratch on her." _

She had never heard anyone put as much sinister implication in just one line. She played her part, looking worried down on her hands clasped in her lap. At least, in this way, the men around her had less of her expression to read, less to interpret in this way or that.

Haugh took the phone and handed it back to his henchman. He looked back at Donna.

"Nicholas Crispin," Haugh mused. "No one really left who can tell what happened at the auction. Most security dead, most buyers in jail, girls scattered everywhere. Everyone trying to keep their heads down, especially with Lucky Quinn biting the bullet not much later. Tell me, Poppy, is he really such a monster?"

She glanced up at him, past her eyelashes. "Do you know him?"

Because he was obviously probing her and she'd rather have it out of the way.

"We never had the pleasure," Haugh said, a little tartly. She guessed he simply hadn't been up high enough in the pecking order to move in the same circles as Crispin.

"One of you know the man?" Haugh asked his henchmen, then looked at Donna, searching her face for a reaction. "We wouldn't want to hand you over to just _anyone, _would we?"

#

Rain had left a glittering sheen on the cracked asphalt street, reflecting the long rows of streetlights and the gaudier lights from the Indigo State's front. Although there was not much traffic, cars went by at an irregular interval, some obviously looking for an open parking spot along the street. People came and went from the Indigo State, the line as long as it had been when the night began.

Two bouncers held sway over the comings and goings with polite, unobtrusive menace just because they were both very big guys. They had noticed the dark magnate as it stopped a little down the road, just outside the immediate spill of the bright blue lights of the club. It parked there for a long minute with nothing happening, its tinted windows keeping whatever was inside, hidden.

Dark cars parked just off from your front door tended not to be a good sign, the bouncers edged closer together, exchanging looks, wondering if this fell within their responsibilities or not.

Their problems were solved when their boss pushed his way past them from inside the club. Haugh seemed just a little bit livid.

"Getting called down," he muttered with an angry glance at Donna as if it was her fault, which, of course, it was.

'Crispin' had called the henchman whose phone Haugh had used earlier, announcing he was at the Indigo and expected delivery of his property promptly. Haugh had tried arguing, but been shot down so harshly, Donna could practically see him regret putting the phone on speaker again.

As their little group approached the magnate, the driver got out, hurried around the car and just about managed to open the door for his passenger when they arrived.

The street had become oddly deserted since the magnate had stopped. No passing cars and their harsh, revealing headlights and it was a good trick, keeping well away from what was potentially a well lit room in which Haugh had all the opportunity he needed to actually _recognise _the man he was most certainly _not_ expecting. And Aiden Pearce's face had been plastered across every screen in the city for months.

Not that too much of his face was visible just now, even without the trickery. Collar up and a dark shawl around his throat, obscuring the line of his jaw and the shadow of the fedora covering everything but the mouth. He stepped clear of the car and the driver withdrew a subservient step. Pearce leaned against the back of the car, crossed his arms over his chest and studied them from the beneath the fedora in slow-burning silence.

It was a good show, Donna decided, after she'd stolen a quick glance at Haugh and caught him looking much less sure of himself out here and facing this rather imposing stranger. Who, just to make Haugh even more nervous, made absolutely no attempt to speak first.

The moment broke when Haugh's wounded pride kicked back in, he remembered that his men were watching him and that he was on his home turf.

"Mr. Crispin, I presume?" Haugh asked.

'Crispin' inclined his head slightly and didn't respond to the question. "What trouble?" he asked instead with careful emphasis on each word.

"Your girl," Haugh said with some disdain. "Has been snooping around in my office. When we caught her she told us a stupid story. Really, insults my intelligence and all."

"What there is of it," 'Crispin' said lowly, but didn't give Haugh time to bristle at the slight. "I'm sure she just got lost. It happens. Sometimes."

'Crispin' pushed himself from the car, dropped his hands into the pockets of the weathered leather coat he was wearing. It made Haugh's men twitch and startle, Donna could feel them just behind her, unsure whether they should react or not. 'Crispin' noticed and stopped for a brief moment until they relaxed again.

He tilted his head a little, just enough to convey a certain _curiosity. _

He pulled one hand free from the pocket and held a rolled-up bundle of money out.

"Let's make this go away," he said dully. He took a step towards Haugh, close enough to offer the money and out of the shadow. A streetlamp's light slipped around the fedora as he moved and the angle changed.

And the street lights went out, easy as turning a switch in your living room. Haugh and his men shuffled, glancing up and down the street, then back at the still well-lit club and the lights still shining from windows along the street.

"That's not a blackout," one of Haugh's men observed, rather unnecessarily.

"Fucking ctOS," another muttered.

'Crispin' hadn't retracted his arm when the lights went down, he'd simply stopped, suddenly reduced to a distantly lit, black outline against metal-grey darkness.

Haugh, finally, to assuage Donna's fraying nerves, seemed to buy into the act. Or perhaps he had been looking at the money when he probably _should _have been looking at who offered it, while it had been bright enough to see. If today's luck held for another minute or so, Haugh would never even know his mistake.

Haugh took the money. "All right," he said. "Your girl was never here."

He glanced over his shoulder and one of the henchmen gave her a shove, not too rough under her presumed owner's critical gaze. It still nearly made her stumble, she had grown stiff in her tension and her flimsy dress wasn't doing much against the leeched late-night cold crawling over the asphalt. Her heels clicked loudly as she walked the few steps toward 'Crispin'. He took the other hand out of his pocket and wrapped it around her waist, letting it rest heavy and possessively low on her hip for a moment.

"Get in the car," he growled.

Before she had time to even contemplate the warning in his tone — more than playacting, this — the driver came forward and opened the door. He put a hand to her upper arm and helped her gently along as she scrambled into the car. She scooted to the opposite seat, watched as the door was thrown closed and the driver hurried around to get behind the wheel.

"On the other hand," Haugh was saying on the dark street outside the luxury car. "I definitely remember seeing you here, Mr. Crispin."

'Crispin' took his time, let the silence grow heavy and stifling, smog drawing all the oxygen from the air. Then he turned away, quite deliberately, not bothering to speak to Haugh's face.

"We're done here," he said, gloved hand already on the handle, Donna already heard its quiet click.

"Mr. _Crispin," _Haugh raised his voice and the street was so empty, Donna thought she could hear something like an echo.

"I'm absolutely sure," Haugh continued, a new sneer in his voice. "It'd be a shame if the wrong people heard you were back in Chicago."

Pearce had no way of knowing about that particular part of her story, of course, but Haugh was doing a good job clueing him in in how eager he was to milk this opportunity for everything it had, or _potentially _had. He let go of the door again, turn around and for the first time since the charade had begun, with anything other than measured menace. Instead, he took three, quick long strides that brought him close to Haugh, playing the darkness for all it was worth.

Even from where she sat, bad angle and worse lighting and all, she saw Haugh flinch before he could stop himself. It created a little shockwave through his men, once again unsure if they were required to interfere.

"I _said,_" 'Crispin' rasped. "We are done."

And Haugh yielded, out of a sense that his dignity couldn't be saved if he kept pressing because 'Crispin' had turned out to be exactly the kind of intimidating motherfucker people always assumed. Donna wouldn't be surprised if Haugh found a more weasely way to make use of this, but Pearce would have his finger right on his pulse by then.

Come to think of it, maybe it'd even stir Haugh up a bit. For someone who professed squeaky-cleanness, he sure didn't have qualms trying to apply blackmail.

Donna finally allowed herself to curl up in her seat when the magnate started moving, it's motion silent and smooth, as befit a car this expensive.

"You okay?" Pearce asked eyeing her from the side. He'd let his collar drop and pushed the fedora back far enough to allow _some _view of his face, especially as the street lamps flickered back on, some of them taking a little longer than others.

"Yeah, fine," she said. "It all went according to plan. I got one bug into Haugh's laptop and dropped a few others in his office when no one was looking. But I'm not sure if they're close enough to anything."

"Easy way to find out," Pearce said with a smile. He briefly looked away from her and scanned the houses rushing past. He pulled his phone from the coat and quickly tapped it twice. Just in time, as it turned out, for road blocks to retract at the end of the road. A line of cars had formed on the other side.

He kept his attention fixed on the phone and when he said nothing for long minutes, Donna finally put a hand on the seat between them and leaned over to look at the screen from the side. He shuffled a little, looked at her. "Oh, sorry," he muttered and angled the phone toward her.

But he was going too fast through the data for her to make much sense of. She spotted something that looked like calendars, spreadsheets of numbers, but gone too quickly to read.

"I was almost expecting there's just Haugh's unpublished novel of vampire unicorns," Donna said. "He's crazy enough for that sort of thing."

"No," Pearce said earnestly. "He's running a market downstairs."

"A market?"

"Quinn had blackmail on Blume, kept them leashed, but Quinn's dead and the blackmail is all public. Until they find a new arrangement, off the grid is fashionable in the criminal underworld. That's what the Indigo State is. A ctOS proof marketplace."

"How big is this?"

"Not sure, can't tell from this. It can't have been operational for long, but it looks like it's good business for Haugh and whoever cooked up the idea in the first place."

She pulled her gaze away from the phone to study his face. "You could take this to the police. Leak it, gives them enough reason to raid the place."

"They'll just shut it down," he said. "And the backers will just set up shop elsewhere. No, cops can't move on this."

She wasn't sure what she heard in his voice, but it was unpleasant and rough, a side of him she hadn't seen before, only suspected. It almost looked like greed in the darkness, an eagerness to have this to himself and not trust someone else with it.

Perhaps she should argue the point, or even ignore him and tip the cops off herself. She could just claim she'd stumbled over the Indigo State by accident. She had enough pull to get things moving in the right direction. But then, Pearce had a point, too. A place like that was just one node in a far larger web. It would require careful planning to take down all — or at least most — of it.

Before she had the chance to make up her mind, the driver said, "Pearce, I think we're being followed."

Rather than lower the phone, Pearce swiped the screen and replaced Haugh's files with some kind of custom interface.

"We are," Pearce confirmed after a moment.

"Haugh?" Donna asked, though it didn't seem likely. Haugh hadn't had enough time to prepare something like that.

"I don't know," Pearce said. He looked up and around, scanned the cars outside. "If it is, he's better than I thought."

"What should I do?" the driver asked. "Try to shake them?"

"No, stop the car," Pearce said. "You did your part. I'll drive."

* * *

><p><em>End of _Nightcall: Indigo State<em>


	15. Nighcall: Bad Faith

**Note: **Allison Paxton's story was originally part of its own oneshot and a concept I've been wanting to do right from the start. What Aiden does has to have consequences, even if he's usually too much of a hypocrite to acknowledge it.

Also **note**: Poppy's reasoning _is _a bit skewed.

**Warning:** Deals with some unpleasant things and it causes some emotional whiplashing. Life can be cruel like that.

* * *

><p>[summary: Poppy is forced to serve as bait.]<p>

**_Nightcall: Bad Faith**

* * *

><p><em>"What's up?"<em>

"… can you come?"

_"Something wrong?"_

"You could say that."

_"On my way."_

* * *

><p>Fear was a curious emotion, she had spent nearly a year with it until she had barely noticed it was there anymore. The human mind made its arrangements with such things and even found a kind of peace with its ultimate fate. She had had convinced herself that part of her life was done, when the cops came and Quinn's auction blew up in his face. When the cops offered her to clear her record if she worked for them.<p>

That wasn't to say her life was never in danger or that it slipped her control every so often. No one, ever, was always in control and trying to achieve it was a sure way to drive yourself mad. But she'd had it covered, her life was her own and she used the line like a mantra every time she found herself in a place she didn't want to be.

But perhaps, at the end of it, her confidence was still fragile. The Infinite 92 had done too much damage for it to heal quickly, perhaps it never would and the best she could hope for was scar tissue in her mind.

So she feared. Many things in the world, more than she was willing to admit and she supposed she was in good company with the majority of people on the planet, struggling with their own tragedies. But there was also _this, _a gun in her face and the concept of fear was less of an abstract, less even than it had been waiting for Crispin and clutching a knife she knew was too short to puncture his heart.

The woman on the other end of the gun watched her with wary attention. She'd waited for Donna outside her apartment and jumped her, overpowered her so smoothly and quickly, Donna suspected the woman had some training. She'd dragged her into her home and forced her down on her couch before Donna even knew what was happening.

She'd thrust Donna's phone into her face alongside her gun, yelled at her to call the vigilante and since sat glowering across from Donna, gun loosely in her hand, but her body retained too much tension for Donna to risk anything. This woman knew what she was doing, or at least she _thought _she did.

"Why…?" Donna began, but her voice had gone too faint. She cleared her throat and the woman startled, gave her a warning look.

"What do you want?" Donna asked.

The woman said nothing, just stared at Donna for the longest time, then looked down at her gun for just as long, it seemed almost as if she was surprised to see it there.

"I was a soldier," the woman said. "I was at war. Afghanistan. It's hard to say I liked it, because that makes me sound like I'm crazy, but it's ironic, I think, because it turns out that's not where the danger was. I came back home and I met the most perfect man you can imagine..."

She was barely speaking to Donna, more to herself and her narrative didn't need to make sense to anyone else. While she spoke, her gaze wandered away from Donna, only to snap back at the slightest movement.

She frowned. "So, what are you?" she asked, dropping her story and with it, any hint of warmth was gone from her voice. Instead, it was laced with contempt.

"I don't know what you want with me," Donna said tonelessly.

"Your _friend, _he took something from me and I don't think he even knows," the woman said. "Or cares. Because I learned that, too. In the war. Sometimes people snap, they go mad with bloodlust."

"My friend," Donna echoed. "Pearce?"

"He's a hard man to keep up with. You're much easier to follow."

She put her head to the side and her expression softened for no more than a second. "I'm sorry I had to involve you, but I can't find him, so I think it's prudent I make him come to me instead."

Donna considered, she forced herself to look away from the gun and into the woman's eyes instead. "You met the most perfect man… and?" she prompted so gently, the woman didn't seem to realise it.

"We married. I left the army and I opened a gym. Taught self-defence. Still do, but I don't have the time anymore. Nor the motivation. It's weird, I can't work up the energy for these people and their weaknesses. I remember it mattered, but… now it's hard to think sometimes."

She had only switched on one light and it was off to the side, not enough to see her clearly unless she turned her head toward it. The light outlined her poise on Donna's kitchen chair, the way she held the gun. A soldier, she'd said, it made sense, but her story was still disjointed and she didn't seem to care to make it more coherent.

"You look tired," Donna said and the woman gave a hard smile.

"It's tough work. I can't sleep anyway," she said and shrugged. "Might as well be roaming the streets, you never know who you'll stumble across, after all. I got lucky, you know. I spotted you the other night outside the Indigo State and I recognised you."

"From where?"

"The news. You were in a picture with a few cops and other sex slaves. I did some digging and once I had a name, all I needed was a favour from a friend at the DMV. Could've been easier, but I'm no hacker, ctOS doesn't play so nice with me."

Donna shifted in her seat, trying to relax cramped muscles, but it didn't do much good. Her position wasn't her problem. Being held at gunpoint in her own home was.

"You'd better know what you're doing," she said. "Because I really don't. What's going to happen? Pearce shows up, you kill him and then what? You go back to your perfect husband and your perfect gym?"

The woman smiled again, unpleasantly. "You think it's the first time I've killed?"

"I think it's the first time like this," Donna said.

"Of course _you_ know what you're talking about," the woman sneered.

Despite herself, Donna felt her thoughts wander. She was trying to talk the woman out of whatever it was she wanted to do, without even knowing what had prompted it, but the direction of her own words brought bitter memories of her own and she wasn't sure she could face it. She'd take the gun over it any day.

"I don't have to explain myself to you," Donna said. "You broke into my house, you punched me in the face and you're holding a gun to it now."

"It's not personal," the woman said dismissively.

"Well, _fuck it," _Donna hissed with a quick surge of vitriol. "My home, my face. If that's not personal, I don't know what is."

"Pick your friends better next time," the woman said. "He isn't exactly rushing to your rescue, either."

Donna kept her gaze fixed on her, roused by her own memories and so vastly out of patience with being told what to do, she said, "Good question, isn't it? What if you got everything wrong and Pearce doesn't show. What happens to me? Will you murder me in cold blood?"

"Collateral damage, it can't always be avoided."

"So that's a yes," Donna said, edged forward in her seat. "You'll kill me. Tell me why I should sit still for that."

The woman immediately tensed, straightened and raised the gun from it's more casual angle. "Don't do anything stupid," she warned.

Donna kept pushing herself forward. The entire length of the room was between them, a couch table and in a straight line, she'd tangle with a stool, too, before she was even close to the woman. More than enough time to fire that gun, even for someone untrained. But Donna decided she had started on the course, she had to finish it now, had to push until something gave.

"What do I have to lose?" Donna asked through clenched teeth. Her heart was trying to beat itself out of her chest. "You'll kill me anyway."

"Sit back down," the woman ordered, but Donna folded her fingers around the arm of the couch, for whatever additional leverage it gave her. She had thrown away any element of surprise and she was done being patient with this madwoman. She'd never done submission well, before the Infinite 92 and she'd only learned how to pick her battles, _act _submissive just to stay unhurt. It'd never been the real thing and now it was too late to learn the lesson.

And from the moment of stillness, everything happened at the same time. Donna leapt from her seat, launched herself forward with what strength she had. Later, she would realise that there were _two _shots, from different guns with different bangs and the low hissing of plaster from the side. But in that instant, she only saw the woman's gun and the spark at its muzzle as it fired. Her foot snagged on the stool and she ignored it, kept going for the woman, who threw herself down and kicked at Donna.

The gun fell from her bloodied hand and Donna wasted no time wondering why there would be blood at all. The woman tangled her legs with Donna's and twisted, tore her from her already precarious balance and made her fall face first into the carpet. Desperately, Donna groped for the woman's gun because it was the only thing that would tip this fight in her fight. She didn't get very far. An elbow came down on her neck and Donna felt herself slump, momentarily disoriented and her body going limp.

She heard something shatter behind her and before she'd blinked her vision clear, a hand settled on her shoulder and yanked her up and across the floor, out of the way. Blindly, she struggled against the grip, but it was gone again immediately and it left her sitting on the floor in the pieces of the stool that had broken her stride before.

Aiden Pearce ignored her, bore down on her hostage-taker before the woman had fully recovered. It was a short struggle, both of them moving fast and precise, but the woman had all the disadvantages, already downed and wounded as she was. Donna saw was the solid length of the baton, crashing in quick succession, into the woman's leg and then the side of her neck.

Pearce stepped clear of her and she crumpled to the ground. He picked up her gun before he stepped away and finally looked down at Donna with an almost thoughtful expression. He picked her up and half-carried her back to the couch.

She slipped down on it and things slowly began to register.

"Sorry about the wall," he said. "And the door."

He returned to the woman, pulled something from his pocket which Donna somewhat belatedly recognised as zip-ties.

Looking away from him, she saw the torn hole in the wall, roughly on level with where the woman's arm had been before. The lock on her door was kicked in, the door hanging ajar. The hallway beyond was in darkness, but it could only be a few more moments before her neighbours appeared.

"Anytime," she said.

Out of nowhere, the pain hit, throbbing in her head and her torso felt as if it was on fire. It took her a long moment to even place the pain. Slowly, she reached around and felt along the edges of her torn shirt, for the wound in her side. Blood had soaked into her shirt.

"I've been shot," she said quietly.

Pearce glanced at the door and hesitated before he walked over to her. He sat down at the edge of the couch, his coat spilled down the side, long enough to touch the floor.

"Let me see," he said, pulled the scarf from his face.

She raised her arm and hissed at the pain the movement caused. She reached for the shirt with her other hand, eyes carefully trained on some spot in midair in front of her. It didn't hurt bad enough, she told herself, and it was hardly the first time she had seen blood, even her own. Perhaps credibility with CPD had mellowed her. She sighed with relief when Pearce took over, carefully but firmly pushed the shirt aside after using a tip of it to wipe the blood away. She felt a new sting when he placed gloved fingers at the side of the wound to get a better look.

"Grazing shot, mostly cauterised itself," he said after a moment. "Let a doctor look at it."

She didn't dare lower her arm, she didn't want to agitate the wound, so she dropped the arm along the back of the couch.

"Next time," Pearce said. "Don't force a confrontation."

"Waiting for rescue can take a too long," she stated coldly, pulling a face and pulling herself back into a sitting position. "How did you know when to shoot?"

"Camera from the building across the street," he said and she could've sworn he smirked when her gaze automatically searched in the comparative darkness beyond her windows. She couldn't see anything out there.

"And I was listening in with the mic on your laptop," he added.

She looked at the laptop, too, then back at him. In retrospect, she blamed the adrenaline, but perhaps it was something else entirely, something the woman had stirred up when she challenged her. Of course it would have been the smarter choice to sit tight and wait for rescue, but there had been one time in her life when she hadn't fought when she should have.

Or it _was _the adrenaline, but Pearce looked good this close and he hadn't moved away yet. Serious. Trustworthy_. _In the end, she supposed, there were worse reasons than trust. Pain pulled on her skin as she put her hand on his neck and the most surprising thing, in the end, was that she managed to surprise him at all, tightened her grip on him and leaned in, kissed him with all she had, because she was certain it would only be a moment…

His lips were dry under hers, slightly cracked, parted when she'd took him unaware and he didn't respond at all, just let himself be kissed in odd, counterpoint passivity to everything she knew about him, but didn't remember how to stop, just coaxed and at least he was alive and warm and then he _did_ kiss back, aggressive enough to match her sudden hunger. She felt the tendons in his neck strain under her fingers, but she couldn't tell if he fought with leaning away or into it.

The edge of his cap scratched the side of her head and it seemed to be the incentive for him to pull back. She didn't want to let go, sucked his tongue back into her mouth and followed him back, despite the new tear in her side. He settled a hand on her arm, held her and finally freed himself from her, but he was still too close, easy to reach if it didn't hurt so much. She couldn't read in his face, couldn't tell what there was in his eyes, but she knew she wanted more of it.

And the moment was gone. The light in the hallway turned on, closely followed by cautious footsteps outside. Her door was given a faint shove, just enough to make open a few inches more. Pearce tensed away from her, turned so his back was fully to the door. Donna forced her head back up and hoped she had her facial expression back under control.

"Ms. Dean?" a male voice inquired.

"I'm all right!" she announced. "Just… a little trouble."

Her neighbour edged a little further into the room, but not enough to spot the bound woman or to get a good look at Pearce. His attention was fixed on Donna anyway.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Like I said…occupational hazard," she waved with her arm vaguely. "You know I work for the cops, right? They'll be here any minute, it's under control."

"… yes?" he asked. His gaze flitted around, rested on Pearce for a moment. "Do you need any help?"

"I already have help," Donna said, forced a reassuring smile. "It's fine, really. Cops will take your statement, don't go back to bed immediately."

"Okay, Ms. Dean," he nodded. "I'll be just down the hall."

He withdrew, she heard him talk to somebody else, some other neighbour down the hall, but no one appeared at her door again.

She took a deep breath, still tasting him on her lips. "You…" she started, unsure herself of what she would say next, but she could already tell he was going to leave. She didn't think he liked surprises much, even this kind of surprise.

A frown had settled on his face and he straightened the cap. "We really should call the cops," he said and she wasn't sure if he was affected by what she had done at all. "Will you be okay?"

"Sure," she said, chewing on her lower lip. The woman was stirring back to consciousness slowly, but she wouldn't be back in fighting condition any time soon. "What should I say?"

"She's got a history of psychological issues," he shrugged and got up from the couch. "It's easy to discredit most of what she says. I was here, I helped, because the vigilante does that. Other than that, you don't know me. Should work out."

She pressed her arm to her side carefully, but couldn't quite decide if it made the pain better or worse. She listened to his 911 call. She watched as he went back to the woman to check her bounds and got spit in the face for his trouble.

They waited in heavy silence, together and strangely apart, until Pearce's phone told him a police cruiser had just stopped outside her apartment and he left with just a quick nod in her direction.

She didn't know what she should have said, either.

* * *

><p><em>"Donna."<em>

"I thought you wanted to know about Allison Paxton? Unless you already do, of course."

_"She's 41 years old, divorced, her gym is facing foreclosure. She was in Afghanistan and honourably discharged five years ago. How is she doing?"_

"Depends, but I'd say not so good. She's obsessed with you. She'll stay in custody for now. Whether she'll face hospitalisation or prison, I don't know."

_"You had any trouble?"_

"Not really, but the vigilante saving me better not become a habit."

_"This one's my fault anyway."_

"She claimed we were in league, but she can't prove anything and she's not calm enough to make people listen to her. I feel a little sorry for her, even though I still want to punch her. I didn't get a good look at her file, I don't have that kind of authority, but people tell me things."

_"I have a little more, if you want."_

"Yes, she invaded my home, after all, might as know why… So, uhm, Pearce…"

_"Call me Aiden."_

"_Aiden_, well, that makes things much better… I really don't know how to say this, so I'll just forgo any eloquence. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come on to you like that. That was pretty embarrassing and I don't know, I probably made you feel uncomfortable. I don't even know you that well. Maybe you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend or you just don't do this sort of thing. I shouldn't have… just… I should've… Dammit, say something."

_"None of those."_

"What?"

_"No girlfriend, no boyfriend, no abstinence. I just lead a very strange life, Donna."_

"I really am sorry. That was clumsy. I must have gone rusty in the Infinite 92. Not like I have to do a lot of flirting in that place. Everyone knew why they were there, after all. I guess I just don't remember what it's like out here in the real world. It's been a long time since I had the freedom to, well, to make my own choices."

_"I'm flattered." _

"I still put my foot in my mouth. And it irks me, because I can't take it back and because I'm afraid it's going to change things between us. I don't even know if there's anything between us in the first place, but I'm so very grateful that you wanted to trust me and gave him that job. I can imagine… I doubt trust comes easy to you. It doesn't for me, not anymore. But what you do? I agree with what I've seen and if I can help more, I want to. But… I didn't need to make things more complicated."

_"We do work well together."_

"So… what's changed now? Will I live it down?"

_"Don't worry, it's the fight, it gets to you sometimes. And I should apologise, too." _

"How is that?"

_"Because I can't be sure of your reasoning. I don't really know what happened to you at the Infinite 92, but I don't want you to feel obliged to me in any way. Certainly not that way."_

"That's what you think?"

_"It's a possibility. I don't want to use you." _

"Other than for planting those bugs?"

_"I asked, you agreed. Besides, you told me you wanted to help and it was a good match. Just business."_

"And you think kissing could be just business for me?"

_"Wasn't it?"_

"I don't think you have the right to have an opinion on that. Maybe… maybe we should both not second-guess each other. And this conversation? It's just making things worse. I can't take back what happened, I can't take back what I've said, either. I don't need anyone to judge me, not even you. And if that's going to be a problem, I'd rather know it straightaway."

_"Donna…"_

"Say it."

_"I'm going to send you what I have on Allison Paxton."_

"What does she have to do with it?"

_"I know much more about you than you know about me. If you still want to… after this… I'd like to invite you to dinner."_

* * *

><p><strong>To<strong>: Donna Dean

**From**: AP

**Message: **I don't really remember the event, only ctos does.

**Attachment: **ctos_p_recording_flagged_vigilante_a_paxton

"… vigilante has to die."

_"You sound so serious."_

"He killed them! He killed my babies! And he probably doesn't even know or care or… I dunno. Look, I saw him. I was stuck in the car, but he was there, the cops had him cornered after the steam pipe blew out. Everything was chaos, but I've been to war, I don't lose my head like that. I know what I _saw." _

_"I didn't doubt what you saw, Allison, I know what kind of soldier you are. But are you sure? It sounds like an accident. Steam pipes blow sometimes."_

"Yes, maybe. Good timing, though, that took out two cop cruisers. Besides, I wasn't close enough to the pipe. We were _all _still alive at that point. We only crashed and the twins were crying, but I can tell, they weren't hurt, just scared. I know the sounds they make… Fuck."

_"I don't know what to say. I'm so sorry. And all the sorries in the world won't change a thing." _

"Yeah, they won't. But he will be sorry when I'm through with him."

_"But…"_

"Because we were stuck, cars boxed us in from three side and the cops were going past on the other side, trying to cut off his escape and you know what he fucking did? He jumped on the roof of a car and fired at us. Looked like a grenade launcher to me, but there was steam everywhere, not sure with kind. He was aiming for the police and he hit a cruiser perfectly. You never heard just how loud it is when a whole car blows up. Deafens you when you're so close. You get that ringing in your ear and it sometimes doesn't go away for days. We were thrown around in the shockwave… and… fire everywhere and shards from the blown-up up car were flying everywhere… there was fire and smoke and… my babies were suddenly silent. So don't you _dare_ tell me it wasn't his fault. It was. He fired a grenade in the midst of all that to save his own skin, so he didn't have stand fucking trial for his crimes."

_"Do you know even know what you're saying? You can't just take the law in your own hands. That's the mistake _he _made. That's what caused all of this. You're just making everything so much worse." _

"The authorities can't touch him. Everytime they try something like this happens. I can't be the first person who lost someone… everything… in all this bullshit. He's dangerous and I've seen that, too, you know. Sometimes people just snap. You give them a gun and tell them to become an accomplished killer and when they do, you give them a medal. And then they kill and sometimes they forget how to stop. It's a fucking power-trip and not everyone can or wants to get down from it. And that's him, I swear. Standing on that car? Like he was out of some hero-worship movie? This guy's tripping _hard_."

_"Perhaps it's more complicated than that." _

"What sort of bullshit argument is that even?!"

_"Probably the truth. Allison, please, listen. Think for a moment. You lost so much. How much more does it have to be? Who will _you _hurt, trying to catch him?"_

"I'll be careful, not like him."

_"How will you even find him?"_

"I don't know yet. But I'll find a way. There's nothing else left I can do."

_"Yes, there is. Let it go. We are all here to help, if you'd let us."_

"No… but… thank you, but I can't. I'm sorry, but I can't."

_"Allison, please…"_

"I'm going to hang up now. I'm so sorry. I can't… Bye, Dad."

_"Allison? Damn, girl, don't do this, don't…"_

* * *

><p><em>End of _Nightcall: Bad Faith<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Sorry for spamming so many stories!


End file.
